Extending Condition Monitoring of Offshore Wind Farms with Remote Inspection

摘要

Condition monitoring provides knowledge of the health of an offshore wind turbine, and can be used for scheduling maintenance operation. It is however an automated system, and can't replace having the eyes and ears of an experienced technician on site. Since transporting personnel to a wind turbine is expensive, time consuming and often not possible due to harsh weather, we propose using remote presence to allow a technician to observe and inspect a wind turbine nacelle without having to leave his office. The main focus of this paper is how the combination of a condition monitoring system and the ability to perform inspections remotely, can decrease the O&M cost of an offshore wind farm. The ability to perform maintenance and repairs remotely is discussed as a future addition to the remote presence system.