For wind turbines situated in harsh offshore environments tens of kilometers from the nearest harbour, the O&M strategy has to be considered carefully. When rough sea prevents the maintenance technicians from accessing the turbines for large parts of the year, the choice of vessel fleet and logistics solution for the maintenance activities is also important.
Where should the maintenance bases be located?
What crew transfer vessels should one use? Fast ones or more robust ones, or a combination?
How much would losses due to downtime be reduced if one improved the condition monitoring system?
How would it impact the O&M costs if a certain type of failure occurs twice as often as expected?
The NOWIcob model can be used as a tool in investigating and answering such questions.
NOWIcob has been developed by SINTEF Energy Research since 2010 within the NOWITECH research centre, the FAROFF innovation project and the EU FP7 project LEANWIND.
This project seeks to apply lean principles to the offshore wind farm project lifecycle. The primary LEANWIND objective is to provide cost reductions across the offshore wind farm lifecycle and supply chain through the application of lean principles and the development of state-of-the-art technologies and tools.