Sensitivity analysis of offshore wind farm operation and maintenance cost and availability

Abstract

Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs are estimated to account for 14%-30% of total Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) project lifecycle expenditure according to a range of studies. In this respect, identifying factors affecting operational costs and availability are vital for wind farm operators to achieve the most profitable decisions. Many OWFs are built in stages and the important factors may not be consistent for the different phases. To address this issue, three OWF case studies are defined to represent two phases and a complete project. An initial qualitative screening sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify the most important factors of O&M affecting operating cost and availability. The study concluded that the important factors for total O&M cost were access and repair costs along with failure rates for both minor and major repairs. For time-based availability, the important factors identified were those related to the length of time conducting the maintenance tasks, i.e. the operation duration and the working day length. It was found that the two stages had similar results, but these were different compared to the complete project. In this case, the results provide valuable information to OWF operators during the project development and decision making process

Marine Renewable Energy in the Mediterranean Sea: Status and Perspectives

“…Let us note that the above estimates were retrieved from sources with different currencies; therefore, wherever necessary, all currencies were converted to Euro according to historical average exchange rate of the corresponding publication year [228]. In [232], an attempt has been made to identify the most important factors affecting O&M costs, in [233] a rational logistics planning has been proposed, and in [234] suggestions for the minimization of the maintenance costs have been provided. A sensitivity analysis regarding the life cycle costs and the most important economic indexes in terms of economic feasibility of a floating OWF has been presented in [235].…”

Sensitivity of Risk-Based Maintenance Planning of Offshore Wind Turbine Farms

“…Figure 11 shows the resulting maintenance costs over a lifetime of 20 years when considering all afore-mentioned uncertainties related with risk-based maintenance planning. Reference [41] considered an envelope of ±20% for downtime uncertainties. When assuming that ±3σ represents the whole sample space, this leads to a standard deviation of roughly 0.07, which is considered the value considered for σ rep in Figure 11.…”

Operations and maintenance planning for community-scale, off-grid wave energy devices

“…More recent studies have begun to use the vast experience built up by the global offshore wind industry to assess the sensitivity of O&M tools, e.g. Martin et al (2016). This experience is also being used to validate O&M models, as described by Dinwoodie et al (2014).…”