Search results

Maintenance planning is a complicated decision-making process that involves the major stakeholders and the main life-cycle phases of an engineering system. The purpose of this paper is to propose an availability-centred maintenance planning approach for offshore wind farms, with special focus on the early system design phase.

The proposed approach is based on a stepwise procedure that integrates logistics consideration into reliability-centred maintenance. For each step, the essential methods for systematic analysis and documentation are introduced.

Practical information from current offshore wind farms and lessons learned from relevant industries are included to exemplify and justify the implementation of the proposed approach. In a general way, the approach shows that valuable input can be provided to decision making about maintainability and maintenance planning. Furthermore, the approach facilitates the initial maintenance plan to be adjusted and improved upon as additional operating experience becomes available.

Offshore wind energy is still an industry in its infancy with an attendant high degree of confidentiality. There is scarcely any detailed practical information available for the production of a case study on this topic. However, the current paper’s theoretical basis may be applied to identify current and future knowledge gaps, for the development of more detailed guidelines as established in the further research.

Maintenance planning of offshore wind farms is an area of current interest, although often the focus is on achieving cost reductions and not on the formal development of such a systematic approach as conceived in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the essential barrier and reveal the priority among common barriers to offshore wind energy in an Indian context with the assistance of the proposed framework.

Based on the proposed framework, a five-phase methodology was adapted to explore the essential barrier step by step. The common barriers, which were collected from the existing literatures through a systematic review, were further validated by field experts. The collected common barriers were evaluated with the assistance of the case industry’s field professionals through an analytical hierarchy process, a multi-criteria decision-making tool, to evaluate the barriers to Indian offshore wind energy.

Among the 12 common barriers to offshore wind energy, it is clear that “high capital cost” is the most essential barrier involved in the implementation of offshore wind energy farms in the Indian context.

This study reveals the importance of offshore wind power as a long-term profitable strategy to the case company within the Indian context. By addressing the essential barriers to the implementation of offshore wind farms, the Indian offshore wind system managers can train their employees to counteract the hindrances through the benchmarking of pioneering global offshore wind power developers such as Denmark and the UK. Further, this study provides useful suggestions to the Indian Government regarding policies for offshore wind energy; it also clearly projects the current status of the Indian offshore wind farm implementation.

This study assists Indian key stakeholders of offshore wind energy by indicating the essential barrier in an Indian context; they can remove the particular barrier instead of focusing on others that previous studies have identified. Further, this study brings out the importance of offshore wind power in an Indian context, which can urge stakeholders to invest more in offshore wind farms.

There is increasing research interest in the expansion of the offshore wind energy sector. Recent research shows that operations and maintenance (O&M) account for around 20-35 per cent of the total energy costs in this sector. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of O&M issues in the offshore wind energy sector to propose initiatives that can help reduce the cost of energy used by offshore wind farms.

The paper is based on an in-depth literature review and a Delphi study of a panel of 16 experts on O&M.

Consisting primarily of conceptual papers and/or modelling papers, the extant literature identifies several challenges for O&M in the offshore wind energy sector. These challenges can be grouped into four categories: issues related with industry immatureness; distance/water depth; weather window; and policy issues. The Delphi study identified three other major issues that lead to increased O&M costs: too many predefined rules that limit development; lack of coordinated planning of the different services offered at the wind farms; and lack of a common approach on how O&M should be managed strategically.

The present study is based only on Danish respondents. Future research needs to include various respondents from different countries to identify country-specific contingencies.

The paper provides an overview of the O&M issues in the offshore wind energy sector to prioritize where future resources should be invested and, thus, reduce O&M costs.

This is the first paper on O&M issues that bridges both literature studies and industry expert opinions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a combined social constructivist, internal and external conceptualisation of the process of realising offshore wind farms, and to investigate costs, time, delays and operational performance results of offshore wind farm power plant projects in Denmark and Sweden with a view to possible strategic misrepresentation.

Desk study of a sample of seven Danish and Swedish offshore wind farms using triangulation of publicly available material.

Some of the wind farm projects are successful and some less successful. In the latter group, budget and time overruns and under-performance are found. The paper discusses specific elements of possible strategic misrepresentation but finds a contradictory pattern. Also competences developed on the basis of experience do not produce clear results, since more recent wind farm performance is poorer than earlier.

If desk research were combined with other methods, it would be possible to detect projects ' internal phenomena better.

There is a need to improve the efficiency of the wind farm building process and to improve the quality of offshore wind turbines, their foundations and cabling.

Renewable energy power plants comprise an important societal investment, yet their costs and possible cost reductions are poorly understood.

This paper aims to reveal how larger enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can enable innovation collaboration for enhanced competitiveness of the offshore wind energy sector.

The research is based on a longitudinal qualitative study starting in 2011 with a project-based network learning course with 15 SME wind farm suppliers and follow-up interviews with 10 SMEs and continued with interviews conducted with 20 individual enterprises within operation and maintenance conducted in 2014-2015.

The findings reveal challenges as well as opportunities for innovation collaboration between larger enterprises and SMEs to contribute to the innovation and competitiveness of the offshore wind farm sector. A glass ceiling is revealed for demand-driven positions if the SME does not possess rare and specific valuable knowledge. There are opportunities revealed in general for supplier-driven positions if SME suppliers can collaborate and develop interesting solutions for larger enterprises. If SMEs succeed in either of these aims, the SMEs have an opportunity to attain partner-driven collaboration. However, challenges are present according to the understanding of the different organisational approaches in SMEs and larger enterprises and in the different business approaches.

The research is limited to the offshore wind energy sector. Further research is needed for verification of the findings in other energy sectors.

A fourfold contribution is made to enhance the understanding of innovation collaboration and to enable competitiveness for the offshore wind energy sector. SMEs, larger enterprises, academic researchers and policy bodies are provided with a model for action within the four positions for innovation collaboration.

In reference to the offshore-wind industry, this study aims to show that innovative purchasing and supply management practices can increase both firm- and industry-level performance. This paper also includes a description of the offshore-wind supply chain, which remains understudied in academic literature, despite increasing global development of offshore-wind farms.

Offshore-wind farm projects use more and larger turbines, which greatly increase the complexity of the supply chain. Innovative purchasing and supply management practices, designed to tackle this growing complexity, could help companies achieve the key success factors that define this industry. The evidence comes from real-world, offshore-wind farm projects, with the London Array farm as a principal example.

Innovative purchasing and supply management practices include decisions to make or buy, contract forms and local-to-global sourcing. These practices affect the key success factors of the industry by increasing competition, capabilities and control.

Purchasing and supply management practices could affect industry-level performance. This paper is among the first ones to provide an analysis of the offshore-wind supply chain and its evolution.

This paper aims to explore how maintenance tasks can be planned and executed in a smarter way and, consequently, how the operations and maintenance of offshore wind power installations can be improved through modularisation.

This is a case study of one of Europe’s leading offshore wind power operators with more than 1,000 wind turbine generators in operation. By focusing on this company, in-depth insights into its operations and maintenance processes are investigated.

Lean is identified to constitute an important first step before the modularisation of maintenance tasks. The modularisation of the maintenance of offshore wind farms is identified to reduce preventive maintenance times.

The paper develops a process to identify the resources needed for maintenance before the modularisation of maintenance tasks and resources can take place. The authors also establish a foundation for the development of a software tool to support the development of the modularisation of maintenance tasks.

The present study contributes to the rather immature field of research on the operations and maintenance of offshore wind power. Furthermore, it adds to the emerging research area of service modularity.

To support ongoing industry efforts to reduce the cost of energy (CoE) of offshore wind compared to other types of energy sources, researchers are applying scientific models and thought processes to identify potential areas of improvement and optimization. This paper aims to introduce a conceptual framework from a supply chain management (SCM) perspective, aimed at promoting the reduction of CoE in the offshore wind energy industry.

Using conceptual arguments from current academic literature in SCM, a comprehensive framework is presented that clarifies how SCM practices can be used by offshore wind energy industry to reduce CoE.

The offshore wind energy sector is a young industry that must reduce CoE to compete with other forms of energy. Applying a supply chain perspective in the offshore wind industry has hitherto been limited to the academic community. This paper offers a SCM framework that includes three interdependent aspects of reducing CoE – innovation, industrialization and supplier partnering – to guide the industry towards sources to reduce CoE.

SCM is a broad research area; thus, the presented framework to reduce the CoE is open for further development.

The paper provides insights into how the CoE can be reduced through innovation, industrialization and partnering in the offshore wind energy supply chain.

The paper offers a seminal contribution by introducing a SCM framework to understand sources and approaches to reduce CoE in the offshore wind energy industry.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how management of uncertainty can enable sustainability of complex projects.

The research was conducted from June 2014 to May 2015 using a qualitative deductive approach among operation and maintenance actors in offshore wind farms. The research contains a focus group interview with 11 companies, 20 individual interviews and a seminar presenting preliminary findings with 60 participants.

The findings reveal the need for management of uncertainty through two different paths. First, project management needs to frontload important issues, which results in the need to use resources much earlier than noted in the usual stage gate approach. Additionally, the base organisation needs the capacity to both explore and exploit important issues. In the summarisation of findings, a tool is developed for the two paths to join efforts.

Further research is needed to reveal the generalisability of the findings in other complex project contexts containing “unknown unknowns”.

The research leads to the development of a tool for uncertainty management for sustainability of complex projects, which is termed “UMSCoPS”. The model provides a guide for insight and understanding of uncertainty management.

The previous knowledge on managing uncertainty for sustainability of complex projects is enhanced regarding the uncertainty management in complex projects. The approach to uncertainty has returned to the original notion of the “unknown unknowns”, and project management thereby leaves the widely used stage gate approach. The developed tool provides a fresh understanding of the challenges of uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to review the operation and maintenance practices within wind power applications and to clarify practical needs as gaps between researchers and practitioners.

The paper collects, categorizes, and analyzes the published literature of both researchers and practitioners systematically.

The paper defines significant issues in operation and maintenance of wind energy related to: site and seasonal asset disturbances; stakeholders’ requirements trade‐off; dependability and asset deterioration challenges; diagnostic, prognostic and information and communication technologies (ICTs) applications; and maintenance optimization models. Within each category, the gaps and further research needs have been extracted with respect to both an academic and industrial perspective.

The use of wind energy is growing rapidly and the associated practices related to maintenance and asset management are still lacking. Therefore, the literature review of operation and maintenance is a necessity to uncover the holistic issues and interrelationships of what has so far been published as detailed and fragmented topics to specific issues. Wind energy assets represent modern renewable energy assets which are affected by environmental disturbances, rapid technological development, rapid scaling‐up processes, the stochastic and dynamic nature of operations and degradation, the integrity and interoperability of system‐to‐support.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of research contributions and industrial development efforts. That will be useful to the life cycle stakeholders in both academia and industry in understanding the maintenance problem and solution space within the wind energy context.