Reliability Assessment of Offshore Wind Farms Considering Severe Weather Conditions

Abstract

Growing energy demand promotes the development of wind power. The number of wind farms being built is increasing dramatically around the world. Compared with onshore wind farms, the maintenance of offshore wind farms (OWF) is more difficult due to the potential adverse operation conditions. Therefore, the reliable operation of OWF are major concerns for utilities. In traditional reliability assessment methods, wind turbine failure and repair process are considered under normal conditions, which can't evaluate the reliability level of OWF accurately and comprehensively. In this paper, a time-varying reliability parameter model of OWF components affected by weather intensity is established. Further, a reliability assessment model based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for OWF is proposed. The proposed model is able to fully consider the influence of severe weather and simulate weather intensity, component failure and repair process simultaneously, which makes the obtained reliability evaluation results strongly associated with actual operation conditions and more accurate. The case study verifies the effectiveness and performance of the proposed model.