Abstract
In the offshore wind industry, failures are often costlier than those experienced onshore. Through examination of the literature, it is clear that failures occurring in offshore transmission systems are not well documented. As a result of this, many developers and other parties involved in the planning processes associated with offshore wind farms will defer back to existing reliability metrics in the public domain. This article presents a review of European offshore wind farm transmission failures based on fusing information from multiple public domain sources. The results highlight both the spread of the reliability performance of these assets and the reliability performance over time. The results also reinforce the industry view that installation practices could lead to low reliability in the initial years of operation, resulting in increased repair costs and decreased revenue for wind farm owners and operators. The information collated in the review is also compared to metrics from across the literature to evaluate the difference in forecasted failure rates to those experienced within the industry. In general, it is found that the experienced failure rates are subject to a much higher spread in practice than those published until now.
Highlights
IntroductionOffshore wind farms are currently the most prevalent of these technologies, and, with the introduction of low subsidy auctions enabling installations further offshore, the distance from shore at which these are situated continues to expand [1,2]
Any offshore renewable energy sources are still in their infancy
This research aimed to challenge this motion, as it was seen that failure rates being experienced by offshore transmission links have been, in many cases, higher than those published for interconnectors and other high voltage direct current (HVDC) links
Summary
Offshore wind farms are currently the most prevalent of these technologies, and, with the introduction of low subsidy auctions enabling installations further offshore, the distance from shore at which these are situated continues to expand [1,2]. Proposed sites such as Dogger Bank will be up to 290 km offshore, which is substantially further offshore than most current offshore wind farms [3]. With these increasing distances come new challenges in many fields. Due to the intermittence of wind offshore, wind farms are not always producing electricity and as such, when they are, it is of high importance to transmit the electricity to consumers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
