OPTIMAL SUPPORT VESSEL AND ACCESS SYSTEM SELECTION FOR OFFSHORE WIND FARMS

摘要

Operation and maintenance (O&M) costs contribute to a significant part of Cost of Energy produced by offshore wind. In order to reduce the O&M costs and to guarantee safety and wellbeing of the maintenance technicians, for each individual wind farm an optimal set of support vessels and access systems should be selected. This selection should lead to the lowest O&M costs, highest safety and comfort for technicians and highest wind farm availability.rnIn this paper an operation and maintenance cost model optimized for support vessel and access system selection is described. The model calculates the maintenance costs and downtime associated with each O&M strategy, support vessel and access system. This model is generic and allows different scenario’s, consisting of different wind park sizes, distances to shore and different support vessels, to be represented and analyzed. This model can be used as a long-term and short-term decision support tool to optimize the baseline O&M strategy including optimal set of support vessels and access systems.rnFurthermore improvements to the model are introduced. As part of the “Offshore Maintenance Joint Industry Project”, environmental conditions such as wind and current speed, wave height, wave period and wave direction are translated to vessel seakeeping behaviour. Afterwards, the seakeeping behaviour is translated to human wellbeing and operability, which is reflected in the risk of failures in inspection and maintenance activities.