Optimal Maintenance Management of Offshore Wind Farms

Nowadays offshore wind energy is the renewable energy source with the highest growth. Offshore wind farms are composed of large and complex wind turbines, requiring a high level of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS). Firms are employing robust remote condition monitoring systems in order to improve RAMS, considering the difficulty to access the wind farm. The main objective of this research work is to optimise the maintenance management of wind farms through the fault probability of each wind turbine. The probability has been calculated by Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) employing the Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) in order to reduce the computational cost. The fault tree presented in this paper has been designed and validated based on qualitative data from the literature and expert from important European collaborative research projects. The basic events of the fault tree have been prioritized employing the criticality method in order to use resources efficiently. Exogenous variables, e.g., weather conditions, have been also considered in this research work. The results provided by the dynamic probability of failure and the importance measures have been employed to develop a scheduled maintenance that contributes to improve the decision making and, consequently, to reduce the maintenance costs.