The maintenance costs for offshore wind farms are substantial. ECN Wind Energy has developed user-friendly software that can be used to determine the cost effectiveness of maintenance and the availability and energy production of an offshore wind farm in every possible scenario. Luc Rademakers (Manager of Operations & Condition Monitoring for ECN Wind Energy): “ECN is not the only party to develop software and services, but this package combines ECN’s long term expertise in offshore wind energy in an accessible form that anyone can use following brief instruction.” Germanischer Lloyd has recently validated this software as the only package of its kind. 

Wind farms require regular maintenance, and offshore wind farms involve specific requirements: personnel, maintenance and spare parts must be brought in by sea. Wind and wave conditions, as well as the reliability and the failure behaviour of a specific turbine, are important in this. “A minor maintenance procedure at an offshore wind farm can soon cost between three and ten thousand euros. Hiring a large crane ship can easily cost a hundred thousand or more per day.” So a fruitless trip to a wind farm where the weather conditions make it impossible to carry out the maintenance work becomes an expensive cost item. There is a great need among project developers to be able to estimate the costs of maintenance in advance,” says Luc as an explanation for the success of the ECN model.
The ECN package enables users to input numerous factors quickly and easily, after which the possible consequences and costs are calculated. The package primarily helps the developers of (offshore) wind farms to gain a detailed understanding of the maintenance issues. It also helps developers take operational decisions for the long term. For instance, the model can be used to examine whether the substantial costs of a hotel boat for staff may prove to be less expensive than travelling back and forth.

Germanischer Lloyd
“Of course we are proud that Germanischer Lloyd’s evaluation states that we have created a model representing the latest in operations and maintenance. In other words, its calculations are as precise as current information allows.”

The model was purchased by project developers throughout the world even before validation. It is delivered with a complete and user-friendly manual and, if necessary, a three-day training course is provided to optimise its use. “We spend two days teaching the users in practice how to enter their own wind farm in the model. Then the user implements an optimisation himself, and the third day is usually a ‘follow-up day’ to find out whether the users have used the package properly. Contact with the users is an important way for us to fine-tune the product. And we want to exchange information with those who use it in practice in order to keep up to date so that we as a research institute can continue to take the lead in developing new options with regard to wind energy!” says Luc.

Contact:
Luc Rademakers
ECN Wind Energy
Telephone: +31 (0)224 564943
Email: rademakers@remove-this-part-ecn.nl