Optimal chartering decisions for vessel fleet to support offshore wind farm maintenance operations

Offshore wind energy is expected to be the most significant source of future electricity supply in Europe. Offshore wind farms are located far from the shores, requiring a fleet of various types of vessels to access sites when maintaining offshore wind turbines. The employment of the vessels is costly, accounting for the majority of the total...

Towards Closed-loop Maintenance Logistics for Offshore Wind Farms: Approaches for Strategic and Tactical Decision-making

Europe’s offshore wind capacity is expected to reach 450 GW by 2050, meeting 30% of Europe’s electricity demand. With the increase of installed capacity, the costs invested in O&M will also increase significantly considering O&M cost is one of the biggest contributors to life cycle costs. The improvement of O&M management for...

Opportunistic maintenance for offshore wind: A review and proposal of future framework

As new offshore wind development sites move further from shore and existing sites enter their post-subsidy operating period, it is expected that operational expenditure (OpEx) will increase. In order to overcome these challenges, a more flexible and cost-effective maintenance solution is needed. One such solution is opportunistic maintenance ...

A closed-loop maintenance strategy for offshore wind farms: Incorporating dynamic wind farm states and uncertainty-awareness in decision-making

The determination of maintenance strategies is subject to complexity and uncertainty arising from variable offshore wind farm states and inaccuracies in model parameters. The most common method in the existing studies is to adopt an open-loop approach to optimize a maintenance strategy. However, this approach lacks the ability to capture...

A multi-objective maintenance strategy optimization framework for offshore wind farms considering uncertainty

While offshore wind energy is showing enormous potential, effective approaches to enhance its economics are being sought at the same time. The design of maintenance strategy is a type of strategic decision-making for offshore wind farms, aiming to improve energy production and reduce maintenance expenses. As a complicated and challenging task...

A review of operations and maintenance modelling with considerations for novel wind turbine concepts

New wind turbine technologies and designs are being explored in order to reduce the cost of energy from offshore wind farms. Two potential routes to a lower cost of energy are the X- Rotor Concept (XRC) and Multi-Rotor System (MRS) turbines. A key cost saving for both Novel concepts included in this paper is operation and maintenance (O&M...

2.11 - Wind Turbine Reliability - Maintenance Strategies

Wind turbine technologies are evolving rapidly in terms of complexity and size and there is an urgent need for cost-effective Operations and Maintenance (O&amp;M) strategies to increase the profitability of wind power assets.<br/><br/>Component reliability as well as maintenance strategies have the greatest effect on O&amp;M planning and costs,...

A probabilistic long-term framework for site-specific erosion analysis of wind turbine blades: A case study of 31 Dutch sites

Rain-induced leading-edge erosion (LEE) of wind turbine blades (WTBs) is associated with high repair and maintenance costs. The effects of LEE can be triggered in less than 1 to 2 years for some wind turbine sites, whereas it may take several years for others. In addition, the growth of erosion may also differ for different blades and...

Influence of uncertainty on performance of opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind farms

The increasing capacity of offshore wind energy around the world brings challenges in Operation and Maintenance (O&amp;M) management. Over the past years, many studies have focused on developing sound maintenance strategies in order to minimize maintenance cost or maximize availability. One of the promising maintenance strategies is...

An indicator system for evaluating operation and maintenance management of mega infrastructure projects in China

Mega infrastructure projects provide a basic guarantee for social development, economic construction, and livelihood improvement. Their operation and maintenance (O&amp;M) management are of great significance for the smooth operation and the realization of the value created by the projects. In order to provide an approach for effectively...

Numerical investigation of rain droplet impact on offshore wind turbine blades under different rainfall conditions: A parametric study

The leading edge of a fiber composite wind turbine blade (WTB) is prone to erosion damages due to repeated rain droplet impact during its service life. Such damages are critical to the blade's aerodynamic as well as structural performance, ultimately resulting in substantial repair costs. An effective design of a coating material for WTB is...

An opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind turbine system considering optimal maintenance intervals of subsystems

Operation and maintenance (O&amp;M) costs account for a large proportion of the total costs for offshore wind energy. Performing a reasonable maintenance strategy is an effective approach to reduce O&amp;M costs and gain more profits. In this paper, an opportunistic maintenance strategy for offshore wind turbine systems considering...

Sensitivity study of a wind farm maintenance decision - A performance and revenue analysis

Commercial operation and maintenance of wind farms always involves trying to find the most cost-effective solution from various possible options. In this paper, a maintenance action within a Spanish wind farm was studied, whereby a blade replacement was required to prevent catastrophic failure. The conducted replacement was accompanied by an...