Wind power, as a source of renewable energy, is growing very fast. Especially so, is consideration given to offshore wind farms where expansion is due in part to limited social and visual impact, reduced noise effect of turbines, and at the same time higher production of offshore wind turbines. Maintenance is always a considerable and costly part of the wind power investment, especially for offshore projects, but it could not improve as fast as the increasing wind industry in the world. The operation and maintenance management of wind farms should have always a reliable and structured planning to have an economical investment. At the beginning of the growth of wind industry, companies tried to transfer responsibilities of the failure and loss of production to the insurance companies, but it cannot be continued any more. These days even the insurance companies ask about regular inspection or condition monitoring. In other words, they ask for a reliable strategy for operation and maintenance. Both preventative and corrective maintenance are used in offshore wind farms. Preventive maintenance is usually performed at the first sign of failure, and in so doing it helps reduce costs associated from lost production. Having a perfect preventive maintenance program is not easy and it usually needs more inspection and online monitoring. To select a suitable strategy, data should be gathered from different stakeholders who are involved in the project. The stakeholders could be turbine designers, construction companies, transportation companies, operation staff, etc. The reason is that each group has the data which could help to define a reliable strategy of maintenance. Reliability includes measurements, e.g., failure rate, repair time, and availability. Reliability is the ability of components or system to perform their function under given operational condition and for a predicted period of time. However always preventive maintenance especially for offshore wind farm is faced with uncertainty due to bad weather, access difficulty, and logistic limitation. Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a systematic qualitative technique that balances preventive and corrective maintenance. It chooses the right preventive maintenance activities for the right component at the right time to reach the most cost efficient solution. This research points out that RCM, as an experienced methodology in other industries, could be a good method for scheduled preventive maintenance in offshore wind power for purposes of lowering cost while improving reliability and safety. RCM implementation is always facing with uncertainty. Engaged uncertainty to RCM is known as Reliability and Risk Centered Maintenance RRCM and it could lead maintenance process to an optimal preventive schedule with minimum uncertainty.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-217022 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Manouchehrabadi, Maryam Kharaji |
| 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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