Maintenance Optimization of Offshore Wind Turbines Based on an Opportunistic Maintenance Strategy

Abstract

Owing to the late development of offshore wind power in China, operational data and maintenance experience are relatively scarce. Due to the harsh environmental conditions, a reliability analysis based on limited sample fault data has been regarded as an effective way to investigate maintenance optimization for offshore wind farms. The chief aim of the present work is to develop an effective strategy to reduce the maintenance costs of offshore wind turbines in consideration of their accessibility. The three-parameter Weibull distribution method was applied to failure rate estimation based on limited data. Moreover, considering the impacts of weather conditions on the marine maintenance activities, the Markov method and dynamic time window were used to depict the weather conditions. The opportunistic maintenance strategy was introduced to cut down on the maintenance costs through optimization of the preventive maintenance age and opportunistic maintenance age. The simulation analysis we have performed showed that the maintenance costs of the opportunistic maintenance strategy were 10% lower than those of the preventive maintenance strategy, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed maintenance strategy.

Keywords

• offshore wind turbine
• reliability
• accessibility
• three-parameter Weibull distribution
• opportunistic maintenance