Enhanced Wind Farm Maintenance Scheduling Including Wake Effects

Abstract

With the expansion and dissemination of offshore wind farms, the costs associated with asset maintenance and operation become ever more relevant. Among maintenance activities, preventive interventions represent a significant share of the costs and, as opposed to corrective interventions, may be calendarized according to the farm operator’s strategy. In an offshore wind farm there is often aerodynamic interaction between different machines, namely as a given upstream turbine extracts energy from the wind, it will necessarily reduce the energy available for a turbine that is downstream in the farm. This is broadly referred to as wake effects. The relative proximity of turbines within a farm means such an interaction results in lower energy yield for downstream turbines. Maintenance activities require the shutdown of the turbine, hence the turbine under maintenance effectively produces no wake effect. It follows that, depending on weather conditions, the sequence of wind turbines to be deactivated for large preventive maintenance campaigns may impact the total energy production of an offshore wind farm, especially when the wind direction is considered. The present study investigates the potential of incorporating wake effects in the scheduling of offshore wind farm maintenance activities, considering a reference farm layout and using historical climate data for a real offshore site. Different maintenance scenarios are considered, including distinct maintenance vessels and different intervention criteria. Results show there is a small but relevant potential gain in energy yield when the maintenance scheduling is determined including wake effects, with annual energy production increase of up to 0.18% for the parametric values considered.