Off shore Wind Turbines: Operation & Maintenance Optimization

 Encompassing optimization for off shore wind turbines

Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs are the main cost driver in offshore energy due to the difficult accessibility to the WTs, but also due to the environmental conditions. Sensing & monitoring systems could help attain the expected fall to 70 EUR/MWh by 2030. The highest criticality (in €/kWh) in offshore wind is caused by structural failure, that mainly occurs due to corrosion processes non-adequately neither predicted nor monitored. For that reason, it is crucial to implement new monitoring systems into the offshore wind farms (WFs) to enable Wind Farm Operators (WFOs) to take predictive smart O&M decisions fully considering structural components real and future status.

 Ad-hoc solutions

• Integral solutions will allow WF operators to carry out an accurate predictive maintenance in the future with the aim of reducing O&M costs and increasing the yearly removable electric energy from the offshore renewable resources.

  • Monitoring systems capable to remotely detect e.g. the corrosion level in exact points of the tower (splash-zone) and junction “tower/platform” or the tightening force of the bolts in the wind turbine blades as a remote predictive maintenance reducing considerably the maintenance costs without increasing the probability of operation failures.

 Knowledge and expertise

• Robust wireless communications to operate in harsh environments.

• Customized embedded systems: accurate, real-time, small, low-cost, low power consumption and low weight.

• Ultrasounds embedded processing for unattended real-time monitoring of e.g. corrosion, tightening force.

• Positioning algorithms for precise indoor real-time operation required e.g. by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) solutions.

Power management techniques e.g. Energy harvesting, Ultra low power modes, for power consumption optimization.