7 - An optimal combined production and maintenance policies for a wind farm with environmental and operational considerations

Abstract

This chapter investigates an improved joint energy production and maintenance strategy for wind farms. Firstly, the economical energy production plan for wind farms characterized by the number of operating turbines, by considering the demand variation, the uncertainty of wind velocity and the service level. Secondly, by integrating the obtained energy production, two optimal maintenance strategies are proposed which are: perfect maintenance strategy and combined imperfect and selective maintenance strategy, which take into account the production rate and the degradation of each wind turbine. First strategy aims to determine the number of perfect maintenance actions to be applied to each wind turbine. Second strategy (imperfect/selective) studies the multicomponent system of turbine under operating and environmental conditions, aims to establish both the optimal maintenance periods and select for each one the adequate number of maintained components. A numerical examples and a sensitivity analysis are presented and the obtained results are discussed.