A Day with Our Technical Administrative Assistant

Anik ensures that work requests are checked and that rules are followed. She does this by approving or rejecting check-ins and recording any peculiarities. ‘When something happens that isn’t registered, we have a problem later,’ Anik explains. For monitoring wind farms, she uses three important programs: Sweep, Windy, and Powerfactors.

Monitoring Work Permits

‘Sweep is the program where we receive work requests. Here I check all work permits and agreements, and I assess the urgency of the planned activities. When there are malfunctions, for example, these need to be resolved as quickly as possible so that the turbines can run at maximum capacity again. With work requests, I can see in Sweep which technicians are working and what they’re doing exactly. If a technician checks in without a work permit, I contact the planner to find out what’s going on,’ Anik explains. ‘We ensure that the people who are going to work in the wind turbines have received the correct training and instructions, and that this is checked by a safety expert in the case of special activities.’

Informing Off-takers

When a work permit is approved, Anik informs the off-taker. ‘We also do this when a turbine has a malfunction for a longer period. This helps to reduce imbalance. An important part is to ensure that the work permit schedule is translated into the correct information for the off-taker. Anik ensures that based on the technicians’ schedule and the type of work, the off-taker receives the correct availability schedule.’

Negotiating

Windy is a wind map that shows weather forecasts. Anik: ‘We use this to see if the work can be carried out safely and to ensure that maintenance takes place on days with lower energy yield’. The advantage of Windy is that you can see multiple prediction models simultaneously, allowing for better forecasts. For the wind farms, it’s of course important to generate as much yield as possible. That’s why we regularly have to discuss and negotiate with the technicians’ planners. They want to deploy their people when they have sufficient staff, but that doesn’t always align with the weather. Fortunately, we have good relationships with the planners, and our asset managers are skilled at finding the best way forward. Sometimes you also have to give something to get something in return.’

Monitoring Wind Turbines

We use the Powerfactors program to monitor the wind turbines. It sometimes happens that a turbine produces no or less electricity. ‘When this occurs, we check if we are aware of the reason and what the cause is. If it’s a malfunction, we verify whether we have already received a work request. If not, we contact the planner to schedule someone to resolve the issue,’ Anik explains. ‘When technicians are at work, the turbines are stationary. During the sign-off, we ask the technicians what they have done to resolve the malfunction and if any tasks remain open. The asset managers use this information to determine trends in the performance of the wind turbines and to ensure that issues don’t remain unresolved for long or that malfunctions are definitively fixed. Additionally, we check if the turbines are running properly again and record this’.

At the end of the day, the phone rings almost every ten minutes:
‘Hey Anik, it’s us again. How are you? We want to sign off for today. The weather looks bad tomorrow, so we probably won’t be working.’
‘Thanks for letting me know. I see that you still have a work permit for a few more days, so I’ll sign you off for today and pause the work permit. It will resume as soon as you sign in again. Are there any other particulars I should note?’
‘No, nothing else. Thank you, Anik!’