Developing and validating a holistic O&M optimisation tool for offshore renewable energy projects

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Up to a third is the cost of energy can be attributed to maintenance cost according to theresearch done in 2010 [1]. Now that some processes involved in O&M have improved, it stilloccupies a big proportion of the cost of energy. This can be changed with the use of an O&Msimulation tool COMPASS which is currently being developed by ORE Catapult.Simulation tools can be used to analyse the lifetime O&M costs of an offshore wind farmin detail, with many offshore activities being subject to different weather constraints, annualfrequencies and varying degrees of complexity. In addition, commercial sensitivities and un-certainty surrounding failure rates of offshore components, including wind turbine foundations,subsea cables and balance of plant equipment, is a major barrier to obtaining realistic estimatesof lifetime O&M expenditure. This problem is compounded by the fact that the failure ratesof many components will vary over time (i.e. early failures or towards-end-of-life degradation).Incorporating a suitable probability distribution into the failure rate, weather and other inputsis crucial for correctly estimating Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). For example [2] hasdiscovered that availability numbers may vary in the range up to 20 % just by changing failuredistribution types and hence the downtime losses vary significantly too.Validating O&M simulation tools can be a challenge without close collaboration between op-erators of existing wind farms. The unique position of ORE Catapult, with a strong industryreputation (as proven by leading several collaborative projects involving commercially sensi-tive data) and close links to academia, makes it perfectly placed to develop one of the mostcomprehensive O&M simulation tools for offshore renewable energy projects in the world.