Multi-component opportunistic maintenance optimization for wind turbines with consideration of seasonal factor

Abstract

Aiming at wind turbines, the opportunistic maintenance optimization is carried out for multi-component system, where minimal repair, imperfect repair, replacement as well as their effects on component’s effective age are considered. At each inspection point, appropriate maintenance mode is selected according to the component’s effective age and its maintenance threshold. To utilize the maintenance opportunities for the components among the wind turbines, opportunistic maintenance approach is adopted. Meanwhile, the influence of seasonal factor on the component’s failure rate and improvement factor’s decrease with the increase of repair’s times are also taken into account. The maintenance threshold is set as the decision variable, and an opportunistic maintenance optimization model is proposed to minimize wind turbine’s life-cycle maintenance cost. Moreover, genetic algorithm is adopted to solve the model, and the effectiveness is verified with a case study. The results show that based on the component’s inherent reliability and maintainability, the proposed model can provide optimal maintenance plans accordingly. Furthermore, the higher the component’s reliability and maintainability are, the less the times of repair and replacement will be.