Abstract
Wind farms (WFs) experience various challenges that affect their performance. Mostly, designers focus on the technical side of WFs performance, mainly increasing the power production of WFs, through improving their manufacturing and design quality, wind turbines capacity, their availability, reliability, maintainability, and supportability. On the other hand, WFs induce impacts on their surroundings, these impacts can be classified as environmental, social, and economic, and can be described as the sustainability performance of WFs. A comprehensive tool that combines both sides of performance, i.e. the technical and the sustainability performance, is useful to indicate the overall performance of WFs. An overall performance index (OPI) can help operators and stakeholders rate the performance of WFs, more comprehensively and locate the weaknesses in their performance. The performance model for WFs, proposed in this study, arranges a set of technical and sustainability performance indicators in a hierarchical structure. Due to lack of historical data in certain regions where WFs are located, such as the Arctic, expert judgement technique is used to determine the relative weight of each performance indicator. In addition, scoring criteria are predefined qualitatively for each performance indicator. The weighted sum method makes use of the relative weights and the predefined scoring criteria to calculate the OPI of a specific WF. The application of the tool is illustrated by a case study of a WF located in the Norwegian Arctic. Moreover, the Arctic WF is compared to another WF located outside the Arctic to illustrate the effects of Arctic operating conditions on the OPI.
Highlights
Wind energy investments in the Arctic region is appealing because of the higher availability of wind power, which is almost 10% higher than in other regions due to the higher density of air Fortin et al (2005)
The performance index for each performance indicator is calculated using Eq (1), where the relative weight is obtained from experts and the performance score is obtained from the scoring criteria table (Table 2 in Sect. 2.2), which is based on the characteristics of the selected Wind farms (WFs)
The overall performance index (OPI) is an important tool in providing a measure of the overall performance of WFs, especially in cases where performance data is scarce
Summary
Wind energy investments in the Arctic region is appealing because of the higher availability of wind power, which is almost 10% higher than in other regions due to the higher density of air Fortin et al (2005). The majority of current studies on the performance of WFs in the Arctic focus on the effects of icing on WTs in terms of their structural behavior Alsabagh et al (2013), resulting power losses Kilpatrick et al (2020), anti/de-icing technologies Wei et al (2020) Dai et al (2012) Parent and Ilinca (2011) and risks caused by ice fall, ice throw and thrown blade parts Bredesen and Refsum (2015) Rastayesh et al (2019).
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