The EUROS Workpackage Smart logistics: Operation & Maintenance in a nutshell

Along with the evolution in the offshore wind industry in Europe, there has been an increasing attention to the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) planning of offshore wind farms. This is due to the substantial contribution of O&M (about 20-30%) to the overall power generation cost. The majority of this expenditure is associated with planned and unplanned repair activities subject to the difficulty and capital intensity of offshore operations. The growth of offshore wind farms can be sustained only if O&M costs are reduced by adopting more efficient integrity management and logistics planning strategies, allowing a profitable operation in the absence of subsidies.

The uncertainty associated with the O&M of offshore wind farms stems from different aspects including the reliability of assets, existent environmental conditions as well as the logistics activities. In order to reduce the level of uncertainty and utilize the available resources more efficiently, an asset integrity management framework must be developed based on the available knowledge within the industry and the state-of-the-art asset mathematical models. Risk-based approaches will be adopted in this project for optimizing the inspection and maintenance schedules of wind farms so that upon implementation, the overall risk level of operation including financial consequences is minimized. The work will also take advantage of opportunistic maintenance and advanced logistics planning to develop the Smart Logistics framework for O&M. This will lead to the minimization of excessive repair activities hence lowering the energy cost while adhering to the safety and availability requirements.