Operations and maintenance (O&M) activities represent a significant share of the expenses during the lifetime of offshore wind farms. When compared to onshore wind farms, O&M costs are increased for the offshore case, as specialized vessels, weather windows and rough conditions mean more failures, downtime (decreasing availability), spare parts, and man-hours.This study comprises an analysis of the available O&M data from a selected offshore wind farm. The results and conclusions from this investigation could then be used to evaluate possible reliability improvements and compare options for the maintenance strategies, as well as to ponder the convenience of warranty periods and O&M agreements between wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers or O&M service providers.The life-cycle cost (LCC) concept is utilized in the analysis of the wind farm survey for this thesis. LCC analysis could be the starting point to make decisions regarding specific wind turbine models, as selecting the turbines with the lowest initial cost may not be necessarily the scenario which also costs the least amount of money when taking into consideration the whole life cycle. It may also be a great tool to forecast future operational incomes and expenses of offshore wind farms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-217018 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Trevino Cantu, Hector |
| Publisher | Högskolan på Gotland, Institutionen för kultur, energi och miljö |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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