Different Transportation and Maintenance Strategies for Offshore Wind Farms

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Abstract

Inspections as well as transportation of personnel and repair parts are a significant contributor to the levelized cost of energy for offshore wind turbines. There are different operation and maintenance (O&M) strategies for offshore wind turbines. Maintenance can be performed preventively by replacing the component before it breaks down or correctively by replacing it after it failed. A boat or helicopter can be used for transporting personnel and equipment from shore to the wind turbine. This article compares, among others, a risk-based inspection and maintenance approach for an offshore wind turbine farm with other O&M approaches where only boats are used to access the offshore wind turbines or where the downtime of the devices are minimized. This article presents a dynamic approach for total operation and maintenance cost estimations of offshore wind turbine farms including real weather data together with condition modeling of different main components of an offshore wind turbine. In this approach, mechanical failures, electrical failures as well as software failures are considered. Additionally, uncertainties related with costs, structural damage accumulation, failure rates as well as different maintenance strategies are considered. The report contains a case study where the presented approach is applied to a wind turbine farm and a sensitivity study of the different parameters like the operational range of the boat/helicopter, the electricity price, real rate of interest, inspection quality and inspection intervals as well as the efficiency and sensitivity of the condition monitoring system are evaluated focusing on the overall maintenance costs during a lifetime of 20 years and the number of expected repairs/replacements during the lifetime as well as the impact on the cost of energy using different maintenance and transportation strategies.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationAalborg
PublisherDepartment of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University
Number of pages46
Publication statusPublished - 18 Apr 2017
SeriesDCE Technical reports
Number227
ISSN1901-726X

Keywords

  • Offshore wind farms
  • Maintenance expenses
  • Maintenance tool
  • Case study

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