By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided a three-year extension on the production tax credit through December 31, 2012. There are also a number of other incentives in the stimulus act that are likely to help the renewable energy sector continue its growth spurt.
As a result, the wind power industry is anticipating a boom in "green jobs" over the next few years at least. How many new jobs will be created is not certain yet. The American Wind Energy Association estimates 500,000 new jobs will be created by 2030.
There are about 85,000 people employed by the wind energy sector, said Jeff Duff, vice president of Airstreams LLC, a wind energy education and training firm based in Tehachapi, California. Duff said nearly five jobs are created for every 1 MW of installed renewable capacity.
But with more power generators investing more heavily in wind power, the need for trained wind power maintenance and repair staff is also growing steadily, Duff said.
"Like all mechanical systems, wind turbines require periodic maintenance and repair," Duff said. "People make wind farms work."
Repairs can range from simple blown fuses to extensive repairs on major equipment like gearboxes, which require a crane to mobilize on site, he said.
To help wind farm owners and operators know when maintenance is needed, there are a number of condition monitoring systems on the market that are now in use. These systems can detect equipment failures early on, before they become more costly to fix, he said.
"As this technology improves it is likely that it would help reduce some of the maintenance cost as costly repairs can be scheduled in advance rather than reacted upon as they are now. Reaching to a failure or repair is typically more costly than scheduling through preventive actions," he said.
Bruce Graham, wind energy instructor at Cloud County Community College in Concordia, Kansas, said operations and maintenance technicians will most often stay at one location and perform needed service work at one particular wind farm.
Regular maintenance can consist of dozens of different jobs, including checking tension on foundation bolts, changing hydraulic filters, ensuring cleanliness of the tower and nacelle, checking oil levels, lubricating moving parts, inspecting blades for lightening damage, checking bearings and seals, inspecting the braking system and many others.
The basic skill set required to become a wind power technician are knowledge of electrical and mechanical skills, hydraulics, as well as networking and computer technologies.
"A wind tech needs to have a very good background in all of these areas because when you climb the tower to do the service work you are not going to look for a special wind tech to do just one area. You have to know all of these areas because of the location of the work," Graham said.
Workers must be trained to deal with the hazards inherent to the job — namely electrical hazards, 300-foot heights and rotating mechanical equipment, Duff said.
"Training is absolutely the key element," Duff said. "Their training on the safety and technical aspects of their job has to be something that becomes more than just an event, it must be a part of a culture each individual worker must adopt."
"Safety is No. 1 on any wind farm but everything on a wind turbine can kill you," Graham said. "Extreme weather conditions, lightening storms, falling ice from a turbine during an ice storm, high winds are just a few added hazards."
With respect to official standards, Duff said field personnel should complete a 10-hour OSHA course on fall prevention and tower rescue. Also, many employers require First Aid, CPR and defibrillator training along with electrical and metering safety courses. Airstreams is working with AWEA alongside many other industry professionals to determine more specific standards.
The question of how personnel get their training and who pays for it, Duff said, has been a key driving force to the direction of both Airstreams as a company as well as the wind turbine safety training industry at large.
Until a few years ago, training was something that most individual service companies did in-house, he said.
"There were a few college programs offering one- to two-year programs, however with the growth of the last couple years the industry demanded personnel much quicker," he said.
Airstreams' current program can be taken as two 10-day courses, or a single 20-day course. The curriculum Airstreams uses has been presented at a number of colleges around the state. Cerro Coso Community College in California turned this curriculum into a Wind Technology Boot Camp offered to area students.
There are many different types of wind turbines — DC turbines and AC turbines, synchronous and asynchronous turbines, fixed pitch blades and variable pitch blades, etc. — but Graham said the training offered by programs like his provide a good foundation to work on most designs and models.
Even so, there remains a knowledge gap that needs to be filled before more workers can step up to the task of keeping the country's growing number of wind turbines spinning smoothly and generating power consistently, he said.
"There are getting to be more colleges that offer this training, but we are having a hard time keeping up with the demand of the growing wind industry," he said. "Some wind companies train their own as well, but they can't keep up either."