Failure investigation support for energy infrastructure across the US and Canada

Energy organizations across the US and Canada are managing increasing pressure to maintain safe, reliable operations across power, renewable energy, pipeline, and critical energy infrastructure.

These pressures include:

  • Aging infrastructure and asset degradation
  • Evolving technologies across power, renewables, and energy systems
  • Changing operating conditions that increase performance and reliability demands
  • Regulatory expectations and stakeholder scrutiny after incidents
  • Operational disruption when failures occur

When a failure happens, teams need to understand:

  • What happened
  • Why it happened
  • What should change

An independent, structured, evidence-based failure investigation helps asset owners and operators separate assumptions from facts, identify root causes, assess contributing factors, and translate findings into practical actions that support compliance, strengthen integrity programs, improve reliability, and reduce future risk.

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Common challenges managing failures

Failures can have significant operational, safety, financial, and regulatory consequences. Understanding the root causes of failures helps organizations reduce risk, improve reliability, and prevent similar events from occurring in the future.

Acting under pressure

Failures often demand an immediate response, but taking action before evidence is collected and the facts are clear can introduce uncertainty, cause unnecessary complication, and create new safety or operational risk.

Understanding root causes

Complex failure events often involve damaged assets. Incomplete records and multiple contributing factors can increase the difficulty of investigations. Determining a root cause requires a structured, objective technical analysis that weighs information both supporting and contradicting each hypothesis.

Turning findings into prevention

After a root cause is identified, and immediate operational and safety concerns relieved, attention turns to translating investigation insights into practical mitigation actions to reduce recurrence risk.

Find failure investigation support for your asset type

Select the area most relevant to your operations to connect with DNV specialists experienced in investigating failures across power generation, grid and T&D, wind, solar, battery storage, and pipelines.

Investigate equipment failures and unplanned generation disruptions

DNV helps power generation owners and operators investigate equipment failures, outages, component damage, and performance issues to identify root causes and support corrective actions.

Talk to a power generation expert

Understand failures across transmission and distribution assets

From transformer incidents and cable failures to substation equipment issues and grid reliability concerns, DNV provides independent investigation support to help utilities understand what happened and reduce recurrence risk.

Talk to a grid and T&D expert

Assess wind turbine component failures and operational risks

DNV investigates turbine collapse, blade damage, gearbox failures, drivetrain issues, tower or foundation concerns, and other wind asset failures to support reliability, safety, and informed remediation.

Talk to a wind investigation expert

Investigate solar asset failures and performance issues

DNV investigates module damage, inverter failures, electrical issues, installation-related concerns, and performance degradation to help solar asset owners identify causes and determine next steps.

Talk to a solar investigation expert

Understand battery storage failures and safety-related events

DNV investigates battery energy storage system failures, thermal events, component issues, control system concerns, and performance problems to support root cause clarity and risk reduction.

Talk to a battery storage expert

Strengthen pipeline integrity through failure investigation

From corrosion and cracking to leaks, ruptures, material degradation, and equipment failures, DNV investigates pipeline incidents, identify root causes, and support actions that improve integrity and reliability.

Talk to a pipeline investigation expert

Why work with DNV

700

In-service failure investigations

DNV has led 700+ U.S. in-service failure investigations across renewables, storage, and pipeline infrastructure.

8

World-class Technology Centers

DNV operates some of the most important and progressive laboratories and test sites in the industry.

100 +

Investigations per year

DNV’s Technology Center in Columbus completes 100+ annual energy investigations, including in-service and hydrotest failures and defect verification assessments.

300

Dedicated experts

Our experts bring deep technical knowledge, supported by DNV’s 150+ years of developing and enforcing energy standards.