Operations & Maintenance Optimization of Wind Turbines Integrating Wind and Aging Information

Abstract

Operations & maintenance (O&M) of wind turbines (both onshore and offshore) are heavily affected by weather conditions, particularly wind conditions. Current O&M models focused mainly on negative impacts of wind conditions on turbine reliability and maintenance, while ignoring potential maintenance opportunities emerging from dynamic wind velocities. This article addresses this issue by constructing a novel weather-centered O&M framework, integrating wind impacts on: (a) energy production, and (b) maintenance plans. Both the positive (maintenance opportunities) and negative impacts (maintenance delays) of wind conditions are quantified in the framework. Accordingly, a weather-centered opportunistic maintenance policy is developed to enable a flexible maintenance resource allocation. The maintenance model is formulated, and analytical properties regarding optimal maintenance ages are discussed. Furthermore, the net revenue of wind turbines is evaluated using the performance-based contracting (PBC), which captures dynamics of both power generation and operational costs. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our framework in revenue improvement, particularly when facing high failure risks and production losses.