On the Development of Condition Based Maintenance Strategy for Offshore Wind Farm: Requirement Elicitation Process

Abstract

Motivation: Condition monitoring and diagnostic practices have become significantly important part of offshore wind farms in order to cut down operation and maintenance costs. The challenge is to enable Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) strategy to be implemented to provide maintenance decisions and services at the right time i.e. maintenance is performed when it is needed and not too early and in vain and not too late i.e. causing breakdown and downtime. CBM implementation is challenging due to the complexity and scalability of remote sensing, data acquisition, data manipulation, state detection, health and prognostic assessment and advisory generation. Objective: The paper describes the condition monitoring and prognostic challenge from both academic and industrial perspectives and presents their requirements in order to enable them to cope with multiple and complex fault and failure mode types and provide cost-effective monitoring and prognostic techniques. Method: The paper utilises needs gathering techniques (i.e. interviews, reports, etc.) and a developed requirements analysis framework in order to provide traceable and high quality research and development requirements. Result: The state of the art of Predictive Health Monitoring (PHM), industrial stakeholders’ requirements for CBM strategy and requirement analysis framework for better traceability and high quality elicitation process. Implication: The requirement elicitation process is importantly required for current offshore wind farms due to advanced technological development, rapid scaling up of systems, and harsher installation sites in order to achieve a successful CBM strategy and higher level of cost effectiveness than exists today.