Abstract
Operation & maintenance (O&M) costs account for a large portion of total life cycle cost for onshore wind energy, and the amount is estimated to be more for offshore wind energy. Developing a sound opportunistic maintenance strategy is a solution to reduce O&M costs and enhance wind energy's competitiveness. When the wind farm is located offshore, turbines are not only subject to degradation but also the impact from the harsh marine environment. However, the degradation is mainly regarded as the only cause of the failure in the existing opportunistic maintenance models for the offshore wind energy sector. At the same time, too frequent preventive dispatch of maintenance teams exists on some occasions. This paper proposes a maintenance strategy for offshore wind farms integrating three types of maintenance opportunities. In addition to the maintenance opportunities created by degradation failures and incidents, an age-based opportunity is introduced to improve the trigger of preventive dispatch. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The comparative analysis shows 2.6% and 1.5% annual cost can be reduced respectively when compared with two traditional opportunistic maintenance strategies in the base scenario.
Highlights
The increasing population in recent decades brings a growing global demand for energy, resulting in a serious effect on the environment
The opportunistic maintenance strategy has been studied for the wind energy sector in recent years
A common assumption is made that the failure is mainly caused by degradation, ignoring the influence of environmental impact
Summary
The increasing population in recent decades brings a growing global demand for energy, resulting in a serious effect on the environment. The cost categories of O&M with estimated percentages are: land rent (18%), insurance (13%), regular maintenance, repair and spare parts (43%), administration costs (21%) and power from the grid (5%) (El-Thalji et al, 2009) This means that the maintenance activities account for almost half. The decision maker, such as offshore wind farm owner and operator or the independent service provider, decides if the maintenance cycle should start according to the state of components/ turbines. The economic dependence among turbines and components applies when the combined maintenance leads to a different cost than repairing separately (Izquierdo et al, 2019). It is a systematic research to determine what time to perform maintenance activities for what reason, and what components or turbines can be repaired by making use of the opportunities
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