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

根据2010年的一项研究，高达三分之一的能源成本可归因于维护成本。虽然运维管理中涉及的一些流程已经得到了改进，但它仍然占据了能源成本的很大一部分。这可以通过使用o&m模拟工具COMPASS来改变，该工具目前正在由ORE弹射器公司开发。模拟工具可用于分析海上风电场的运营维护成本细节，因为许多海上活动受到不同天气限制、年频率和不同程度的复杂程度的影响。此外，海上组件的商业敏感性和故障率的不确定性，包括风力涡轮机基础、海底电缆和工厂设备的平衡，是获得实际寿命运维支出估计的主要障碍。许多组件的故障率会随着时间的推移而变化（即早期故障或接近寿命终止的退化），这一事实使问题更加复杂。将适当的概率分布纳入故障率、天气和其他对正确估计关键绩效指标（KPI）至关重要的输入。例如，[2]发现，仅仅通过改变故障分布类型，可用性数字就可能在20%的范围内变化，因此停机时间损失也会有很大的变化。如果没有现有风电场运营商之间的密切合作，验证运维模拟工具可能是一项挑战。ORE Catapult的独特地位，凭借强大的行业声誉（通过领导几个涉及商业敏感数据的合作项目证明）和与学术界的密切联系，使其完全适合开发世界上最全面的海上可再生能源项目的运维仿真工具之一。

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.