Sound maintenance strategies and planning are crucial importance for wind power systems, and especially for offshore locations. In the last decades, an increased awareness of the impact of human living on the environment has emerged in the world. The importance of developing renewable energy is today highly recognized and energy policies have been adopted towards this development. Wind energy has been the strongest growing renewable source of energy this last decade. Wind power is now developing offshore where sites are available and benefits from strong and steady wind. However, the initial investments are larger than onshore, and operation and maintenance costs may be substantially higher due to transportation costs for maintenance and accessibility constrained by the weather. Operational costs can be significantly reduced by optimizing decisions for maintenance strategies and maintenance planning. This especially important for offshore wind power systems to reduce the high economic risks related to the uncertainties on the accessibility and reliability of wind turbines. This thesis proposes decision models for cost efficient maintenance planning and maintenance strategies for wind power systems. One model is psoposed on the maintenance planning of service maintenance activities. Two models investigate the benefits of condition based maintenance strategies for the drive train and for the blades of wind turbines, respectively. Moreover, a model is proposed to optimize the inspection interval for the blade. Maintenance strategies for small components are also presented with simple models for component redundancy and age replacement. The models are tested in case studies and sensitivity analyses are performed for parameters of interests. The results show that maintenance costs can be significantly reduced through optimizing the maintenance strategies and the maintenance planning.

“Maintenance Management of Wind Turbines” considers the main concepts and the state-of-the-art, as well as advances and case studies on this topic. Maintenance is a critical variable in industry in order to reach competitiveness. It is the most important variable, together with operations, in the wind energy industry. Therefore, the correct management of corrective, predictive and preventive politics in any wind turbine is required. The content also considers original research works that focus on content that is complementary to other sub-disciplines, such as economics, finance, marketing, decision and risk analysis, engineering, etc., in the maintenance management of wind turbines. This book focuses on real case studies. These case studies concern topics such as failure detection and diagnosis, fault trees and subdisciplines (e.g., FMECA, FMEA, etc.) Most of them link these topics with financial, schedule, resources, downtimes, etc., in order to increase productivity, profitability, maintainability, reliability, safety, availability, and reduce costs and downtime, etc., in a wind turbine. Advances in mathematics, models, computational techniques, dynamic analysis, etc., are employed in analytics in maintenance management in this book. Finally, the book considers computational techniques, dynamic analysis, probabilistic methods, and mathematical optimization techniques that are expertly blended to support the analysis of multi-criteria decision-making problems with defined constraints and requirements.

“Maintenance Management of Wind Turbines” considers the main concepts and the state-of-the-art, as well as advances and case studies on this topic. Maintenance is a critical variable in industry in order to reach competitiveness. It is the most important variable, together with operations, in the wind energy industry. Therefore, the correct management of corrective, predictive and preventive politics in any wind turbine is required. The content also considers original research works that focus on content that is complementary to other sub-disciplines, such as economics, finance, marketing, decision and risk analysis, engineering, etc., in the maintenance management of wind turbines. This book focuses on real case studies. These case studies concern topics such as failure detection and diagnosis, fault trees and subdisciplines (e.g., FMECA, FMEA, etc.) Most of them link these topics with financial, schedule, resources, downtimes, etc., in order to increase productivity, profitability, maintainability, reliability, safety, availability, and reduce costs and downtime, etc., in a wind turbine. Advances in mathematics, models, computational techniques, dynamic analysis, etc., are employed in analytics in maintenance management in this book. Finally, the book considers computational techniques, dynamic analysis, probabilistic methods, and mathematical optimization techniques that are expertly blended to support the analysis of multi-criteria decision-making problems with defined constraints and requirements.

Offshore Wind Turbines clearly presents the facts and figures of wind turbine operation and maintenance in the inclement offshore environment.

Wind power is currently considered as the fastest growing energy resource in the world. Technological advances and government subsidies have contributed in the rapid rise of Wind power systems. The Handbook on Wind Power Systems provides an overview on several aspects of wind power systems and is divided into four sections: optimization problems in wind power generation, grid integration of wind power systems, modeling, control and maintenance of wind facilities and innovative wind energy generation. The chapters are contributed by experts working on different aspects of wind energy generation and conversion.