Modeling of Operational Availability of Offshore

Wind Turbines
Lingling Huang, Jialin Cao Yu Fu, Shurong Wei
School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation School of Electric Power Engineering
Shanghai University Shanghai University of Electric Power
Shanghai, China Shanghai, China
Linglinghuang82@126.com

Abstract—Availability of offshore wind turbines is known as a logistics accounted for about 50% of all the shutdowns.
key element to a profitable offshore wind project. Because of the Reference [3] confirms that besides the inherent, design- and
poor accessibility, maintenance of offshore wind turbines quality-dependent reasons the maintenance plays an important
dominates the availability problem. This paper presents a role for availability of offshore WTs. Especially in the large
mathematical model for the operational availability of offshore offshore wind farms there are tens or hundreds of offshore
wind turbines considering the maintenance issue and the offshore WTs installed, which will certainly lead to maintenance
weather conditions. The model categorizes all the main issues resources insufficient problems. These delays associated with
varying the maintainability and then the outage time into several logistics are seldom considered in traditional reliability
items that can be easily collected. The insufficiency of transfer
evaluation of power system.
vessels and the average operational availability of offshore WTs
in a lager offshore wind farm are discussed. An example based on Offshore weather condition is another reason that affects the
an offshore wind farm is used to demonstrate the application of availability of WTs. Nine aspects that highly influence the
the model. The results are compared and discussed with the field availability and reliability of offshore wind farm generation
data. Sensitivity analysis forms the suggestion to allocate one
were highlighted in [4] including offshore environment and
vessel for every 15-20 offshore WTs in an offshore wind farm for
the routine maintenance. It also provides some suggestions for the unique installation area of wind farm. Reference [5]
the spare part management. studied extreme weather impacts on offshore WTs. It showed
that the spring and summer months are generally the only
Keywords—Availability, offshore wind turbine, downtime, months during which vessels can perform O&M in the North
transfer vessels Sea. The two-state weather model has been proposed to deal
with the varying weather conditions where power system
I. INTRODUCTION networks are exposing [6]. However, it mainly focuses on the
impact that weather contributes to the failure rate. The impacts
Many offshore wind turbines (WTs) are undergoing
extensive shutdowns due to the intensive met-ocean conditions. of weather conditions like wind speed and wave heights, and
Offshore environment often boosts the failure rates of their effects on the offshore maintenance strategies are not
mechanical and electrical systems and reduces the utilization of involved.
WTs. The harsh weather often hampers the offshore This paper proposes an analytical model of operational
maintenance, makes the downtime of faults everlasting. Since availability (AO) of offshore WTs which considers all
availability is a measure of both reliability and maintainability, downtime caused by maintenance issues and offshore weather
it becomes a key factor of offshore wind projects. conditions. First, the downtime of the offshore WTs and the
procedure of the corrective maintenance are studied. Then
Availability, which may be calculated as the ratio of Mean maintenance of offshore WTs was classified into several
Time between Failure (MTBF) divided by the sum of MTBF categories by the components and their respective transfer
and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), has been widely used in vessels. Finally, the model for operational availability
generating system capacity evaluation. Sometimes it also can evaluation of offshore wind turbines is proposed. The model is
EHFDOFXODWHGZLWKIDLOXUHUDWHȜDQGUHSDLUUDWHȝXVLQJWKH suitable for the situation without operational experiences. The
two-state reliability model [1]. Constant MTTR or repair rate paper is structured in the following way. Section II describes
from a long-run average value has been widely used in the maintenance and the downtime of offshore WTs. Section
reliability evaluation. MTTR usually ignores standby and III presents the AO model of offshore WTs. The influences of
delays associated with the maintenance and logistics which is environment conditions and fault moments are also discussed
proved to be feasible in onshore systems. But these standby in this section. The central findings are summarized in Section
and delays are very considerable in offshore programs. VI.
According to [2], the downtime of offshore WT caused by
The paper is supported by: Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Green II. DOWNTIME OF OFFSHORE WT
Energy Grid-Connected Technology (13DZ2251900)˗Shanghai Science and Operational availability (AO) is defined as the probability
Technology Innovation Project (16DZ1203504).
that an item will operate satisfactorily at a given point in time

978-1-5090-1970-0/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE PMAPS 2016

when used in an actual or realistic operating and support Tt is spent to transport to the failed WT. It is mainly
environment. It includes logistics time, waiting time or determined by the speed of the transfer vessel (vtr) and the
administrative downtime, and both preventive and corrective distance between the harbor and the WT (DWT).
maintenance downtime [1]. It reveals the real downtime of the D
products. The simplest representation is: Tt 3 WT (5)
vtr
7[uptime] downtime Dr is the downtime for the repair work. Note that if a
Ao ! =1- (1) maintenance activity requires more than one working day, it
7[uptime]  7[downtime] 8760 should be divided into sub-activities which can performed in
A. Downtimes description several days because the night time is not suitable for offshore
operations. Suppose that Tr is the real time spent on repairing or
Offshore WTs will be unavailable for two reasons: planned replacing the fault parts, then Tr can be described as
outage and unplanned outage. Planned outages are usually
carried out when wind speed is low and the time schedules are (6)
much more manageable, so the downtime of planned outages Tr 3 N r * twh ! trest
donated by DPMs usually can be easily predicted. Unplanned where, n is the minimum working days the repair work will be
outage of offshore WT may be caused by power system or the occupied. The working days the maintenance real take, which
WT itself. The former one will not affect the availability for the
is donated by Nr, is variable with the accessibility of the wind
WT itself is in up-state. This paper mainly analyzed the
farm. trest is the rest time which may be less than a whole
downtime caused by Corrective Maintenances (CMs), which is
donated by DCMs. The downtime of the wind turbine can be working day. And Dr will be:
calculated as: Dr ! N r * 24  trest (7)
downtime ! DPMs  DCMs These five time variables may be quite different for different
(2) subsystems and faults. Even in the same wind farm, these
DCMs are very considerable in offshore wind farms. CMs of variables for different WTs may be unlike each other. So in
order to gain the availability of WTs in an offshore wind farm
offshore WTs may not be executed immediately due to
with many wind turbines, the average values are what we
weather, logistics and some other reasons which may lead to a expected. According to this category, the data of these time
long waiting time. Even when a repair work starts, the work variables can be easily collected or estimated for a given
still may be interrupted or delayed for the weather or logistical offshore wind project, even a new one.
reasons. A more intuitive description of a CM for offshore WT
is shown in Fig.1. B. Definition of Normal weather and adverse weather
Crew and
Failure Fault equipment Take Repair Repair
Weather condition is an important factor in availability
occures recognised ready off starts completed
evaluation of offshore programs. One situation is that the
weather persisting not accessible to offshore WTs for quite a
Td Tlog Twait Tt Dr long time, such as ice season in North Sea. The other is that
Fig.1 the process of corrective maintenance for offshore WT
the weather is not suitable for offshore operations for a few
The duration of a failure can be categorized into five parts hours or days, such as lighting storms, typhoons and nighttime.
and be calculated by Eq. (3). Considering that the lasting severe weather has obvious effect
DCM ! Td  Tlog  Twait  Tt  Dr (3) both for failure rate and the offshore repairs, This paper
redefines the weather model based on IEEE Standard 346-
Td is spent to find out the failed part or the reasons. For 1973 with their obstructions of the offshore maintenance. A
modern offshore WTs, faults can be detected by the intelligent period of time in a year which persists not suitable for offshore
fault diagnosis systems in a few minutes or seconds which transportation and operation for quite a long time, such as ice
means Td is almost negligible comparing with the whole season in North Sea and hurricane season in Pacific Ocean, is
downtime. defined as adverse weather (AW). The rest is normal weather
Tlog is for logistics preparing. It mainly depends on the (NW). In normal weather days, the offshore operation may not
O&M management and the failure. As the logistical works can be carried out either, because of the visual problems or wind
be carried out simultaneously, speed and wave height. The weather in normal weather
conditions which is suitable for offshore maintenance is called
Tlog 3 max{Tte , Tcrew , Tsp }
(4) good weather (gW) and the one is not suitable is call bad
weather (bW).
where, Tte is the time for the arrangement of transportation
and equipment. Tcrew is for maintenance technicians, Therefore, gW is the only condition that offshore
which is associated with working shifts. Tsp is for the maintenance can take place. It represents two meanings: the
needed spare part which is determined by stock policy. visual requirement specifies no rainy, no fog or no night time
which narrows the visions; the wind speed and wave height
Twait is for the appropriate offshore weather condition. requirements fit the transporting and lifting request. Some
research have been made in NL3 [7] and found that a wave
height limit is accompanied with a wind speed limit. The transportation system is not sufficient, it is the queuing time and
probability of the good weather can be presented as: this backlog of maintenance is related to the number of failed
WT and the average time it will take to get repaired.
(8)
PgW ! P ( gv) P ( Hs, V ) A Markov chain as depicted in Fig.2 is introduced to
represent the backlog of maintenance activities. The state
where, P(gv) is the probability of good vision days, and P(Hs,V) numbers represents the number of WTs that are failed and
is the percentage of time specified by the wind speed and wave queuing for the transportation i for the maintenance.
height of the transfer vessels. PgW is the average percentage of
gW.
0 1 ... Ni ... N WT
III. MATHEMATICAL MODEL
An offshore wind farm consists of NWT WTs. Generally, Fig.2 Markov diagram of the queuing model of transportations.
there are Nsub subsystems of a WT including blades, generators, So,
gear box, electrical systems, control, yaw system, pitch º P(i )(i s s # Ni )
mechanism, shaft and bearing, inverter, brake, and parking 1 is 4 N i
d i 3 d ie !
brake, etc. Any faults of these subsystems will result an outage bi º P(i )( N s WT # is ) (10)
of the wind turbine. Reference [8] demonstrates the reliability is

and downtime of theses subassemblies. where, die is the average holding time of the transporting
For offshore wind farms, some transfer vessels and support
vessel i excluding the waiting in queuing.
equipment are needed to take the offshore maintenance works.
Four maintenance categories of an offshore wind project are Á
Ä P (is )( NWT # is ) bi 3 P (is ! 1)(is ! 2) c i , is 2 N i
defined in [8] and the associated fault classifications for all Ä
Ä
subsystems of a WT is shown in Tab.1. From Tab.1, it is  P (is )( NWT # is )bi 3 P (is ! 1) N i c i , is ˆ N i
Ä
noticed that all of the offshore maintenance should be carried ĺ P (is ) 3 1 (11)
out with some kind of transportations. In other words, the Ä
à is
transport vessel will be occupied when the failure is confirmed where,
until the failure is fixed. It means that the downtime of an Á
Ä P (0) 3
1
offshore WT is also the average occupation of all Ä is
is #1
bi ª ( NWT # j ) N
is #1
biis ª ( NWT # j )
Ä
transporting vessels minus the time transferring back. As the Ä 1!º
Ni
j 30
! º
WT
j 30
Ä
maintenance categories are in series, the downtime of WT Ä is 31 c iis (is ! 1)! is 3 N i !1 ( N i )
is # N i
( N i ! 1)! c iis
can be obtained by Eq.(9). Ä
Ä
is #1

Ä biis ª ( NWT # j )
N cat N cat Ä j 30
(9) Â P (is ) 3 P (0), is 3 1,..., N i
DCMs =© d i  ©P iTt .i Ä c iis (is ! 1)!
i !1 i !1 Ä is #1
Ä
Ä biis ª ( NWT # j )
where, Ncat is the number of maintenance categories defined by Ä j 30
Ä P (is ) 3 P (0), is 3 N i ! 1,..., NWT
the transportations, di and 廗i are the average holding time of and Ä ( N i )is # Ni ( N i ! 1)! c iis
Ä
the utilization rate of the transportations i respectively. Tt.i is the Ä
Ä
transportation time from the failed WT of the onshore à (12)
accommodation with the transfer vessel i which can be
calculated by Eq.(5). According to the normal weather and adverse weather
defined before, there are two kinds of possibilities.
Tab. 1 PROBABILITY OF OCCURRENCE FOR DIFFERENT COMPONENTS
Component Cat1 Cat2 Cat 3 Cat 4
A. Faults happen in adverse weather
Shaft& bearing 90% 10%
Break 20% 80% As adverse weather is not suitable for offshore operations,
Generator 30% 20% 50% the fault happened in this time should wait until adverse weather
Parking brake 100% ends. But the logistics and technicians can be arranged in
Electrical system 2% 8% 90% advance. There are two situations.
Blade 1% 59% 20% 20 One year(8760h)
Yaw System 1% 34% 65% Not Accessible Accessible
Pitch Mechanism 50% 50%
Gearbox 10% 5% 85%
Waiting time
Invertor 10% 90%
Control 50% 50% Fault time
Fig.4 faults happen in adverse weather
In order to get di, the duration is divided into two parts:
when the transportation system is sufficient, the transportation When the waiting time is enough for preparing the logistics,
equipment is occupied when the CM is done and maintenance which means the logistics are ready for the maintenance when
system gets back to the accommodation. When the the adverse weather ends which is shown in Fig.4. The repair
work starts at t=TAW. Repair work will take (n+1) days to get the One year(8760h)
component recovered which requires (n+1) days’ good weather Not Accessible Accessible
conditions. So when a fault happened at t, the average downtime
will be:
Lasting time
¾(TAW # t ! 2Tsi ! Tri ) Pgwi
n !1 Î
¿ Ï Fault time
¿!(T # t ! 2T ! T ! 24)(1 # P ) P n !1 Ï
¿ AW si ri gwi gwi Ï Fig.6 faults happen in normal weather
TAW #Tlog i ¿ 2 n !1 Ï When lasting time is enough for the preparing and
bi ¿!(TAW # t ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! 24 * 2)(1 # Pgwi ) Pgwi Ï
Ç 8760 ¿ Ï dt maintenance work, the average downtime is:
0 ¿!... Ï
¿ Ï ¾(Tlog.i ! Tavg .i ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ) Pgw
n !1 Î
¿!(TAW # t ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! 24 * m)(1 # Pgwi ) m Pgwn !1
.i
Ï ¿ Ï
¿ Ï ¿!(T ! T n !1 Ï
¿ ÏÐ ¿ log.i avg .i ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ! 24)(1 # Pgw.i ) Pgw.i Ï
À!... 8760 #Tlog . i ¿ 2 n !1 Ï
!(T ! T ! T ! T ! 24 * 2)(1 # Pgw.i ) Pgw.i Ï
3
n !1 »
bi Pgwi ¼ Ai t!
24
t#
t 2 ËÌ TAW #Tlog i
(13) Ç bi ¿¿ log.i avg .i t .i r .i Ï dt
TAW ¿!... Ï
8760 ¼ 2 Pgwi ÌÍ
0
½ Pgwi Pgwi ¿ Ï
¿!(Tlog.i ! Tavg .i ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ! 24 * m)(1 # Pgw.i ) m Pgw n !1
.i
Ï
where, Ai 3 TAW ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! ni * 24 . ¿
¿
Ï
. À!... ÐÏ
When the waiting time is not enough for the preparation of »
n !1 ¼ Bi 24t ËÌ
the logistics, the logistics are unready when the adverse weather 3 bi Pgw .i ¼ t!
8760 #Tlog . i
(15)
Pgw.i ÌÍ
TAW
½ Pgw.i
finished. At least ( Tlogi # TAW ! t ) is essential and waiting for
When 8760 # t 2 Tlog.i , the maintenance will wait for the
a day time to take the repair works. Because of the non-attended
situation, the repair work normally starts in the early morning, next year’s normal weather. The downtime is:
usually 6 a.m. in Donghai bridge offshore project. The average ¾(TAW # t ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ) Pgw
n !1
.i
Î
¿ Ï
waiting time for the work shifts between 6 a.m.-6.pm is ¿!(T # t ! T ! T ! 24)(1 # P ) P n !1 Ï
illustrated in Fig.5. ¿ AW t .i ri gw.i gw.i Ï
8760 ¿ 2 n !1 Ï
¿!(TAW # t ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ! 24 * 2)(1 # Pgw.i ) Pgw.i Ï
tw Ç bi ¿ Ï dt
8760 #Tlog . i ¿!... Ï
¿ Ï
¿!(TAW # t ! Tt .i ! Tr .i ! 24 * m)(1 # Pgw.i ) m Pgwn !1
.i
Ï
¿ Ï
¿
À!... ÏÐ
» t 2 ËÌ
n !1 ¼ A 24
0 6 12 24 t 3 bi Pgw .i t! t# 8760
8760 #Tlog . i
(16)
¼ Pgw.i Pgw.i 2 Pgw.i ÌÍ
Fig.4 Average waiting time for the 6 a.m. to take off
½ i

The average downtime will be: According to Eq.(14) – (17), the average downtime of
¾(Tlog i ! Tavgi ! 2Tsi ! Tri ) Pgw
¿
n !1
.i
Î
Ï
component i without queuing is
¿!(T ! T ! 2T ! T ! 24)(1 # P ) P n !1 Ï » A 24 t 2 ËÌ TAW #Tlog .i
¿ log i
¿
avgi si ri gw.i gw.i Ï die 3 bi Pgwn !.1i ¼ i
¼ P t ! P t # 2P Ì 0
Tlog i n !1 Ï
bi ¿!(Tlog i ! Tavgi ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! 24 * 2)(1 # Pgw.i ) 2 Pgw .i Ï ½ gw.i gw.i gw.i Í
Ç 8760 ¿ Ï dt
0 ¿!... Ï » B Ë
¿ Ï 24t Ì TAW
¿!(Tlog i ! Tavgi ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! 24 * m)(1 # Pgw.i ) m Pgw n !1
Ï ! bi Pgwn !.1i ¼ i
¼ P t ! P Ì TAW #Tlog .i
.i
¿ Ï ½ gw.i gw.i Í
¿
À!... ÏÐ
» B 24t ËÌ 8760#Tlog .i
! bi Pgwn !.1i ¼
n !1 »
24t ËÌ i
¼ P t ! P Ì TAW
bi Pgwi ¼ Bi
3 t!
Tlog i
(14)
8760 ¼ Pgwi ÌÍ
0
½ Pgwi ½ gw.i gw.i Í

» A 24 t 2 ËÌ 8760
where, Bi 3 Tlog i ! Tavg ! 2Tsi ! Tri ! ni * 24 and the average ! bi Pgwn !.1i ¼ i
t ! t #
¼P Pgw.i 2 Pgw.i ÌÍ
8760 #Tlog . i
½ gw.i
waiting time Tavg 3 10.5h .
die 3 bi Pgwn .i ( AT i AW ! 8760 Bi ! 210240 # BiTAW
B. Faults happen in normal weather (17)
T 2 TAW Tlog.i 8760Tlog.i
# AW ! # )
When the fault happens in normal weather, the waiting 2 2 2
time may be much less than in adverse time. It just waits Based on Eq.(9-10,17), the downtimes caused by CMs of
for the logistics and the suitable weather conditions to take offshore WTs can be calculated. With Eq.(1), Ao of offshore
off. It is shown in Fig.6. There are two possibilities. WT will be obtained.
 IV. CASE STUDY much to the availability as shown in Fig.7. For the given case
The proposed model has been demonstrated by means of a with NWT =50, three Cat.4s can achieve the availability of
case study of an offshore wind farm consisting 50 WTs located 0.9499 and more Cat.4s have limit effects on the availability.
15km from a harbor. The annual failure frequency per 1

component and occurrence frequency of each maintenance 0.8

Availability
category are based on real data from [8] which is presented in 0.6

Tab.2 and Tab.3. The number of annual fog day and 0.4

thunderstorm day are 23.2 and 20.2. 0.2

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tab. 2 ANNUAL FAILURE FREQUENCY OF EACH COMPONENT Number of Cat.1

Annual Annual Fig.7 Sensibility Analysis of the amount of Cat.4

Component Failure Component Failure Further study for the appropriate number of Cat.4 for
Frequency Frequency
offshore wind farms is shown in Fig.8 with AO ı0.95. It is
Yaw
Shaft &bearing 0.01 0.2 suggested to allocate one vehicle of Cat.4 for about 15-20
System
Break 0.05
Pitch
0.15
offshore WTs.
Mechanism 25

Sugested number of Cat.4

Generator 0.13 Gearbox 0.25 20

Parking brake 0.01 Invertor 0.2 15

10
Electrical system 0.27 Control 0.21
5
Blade 0.07     0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450
Tab. 3 OPERATION PARAMETERS OF MAINTENANCES Number of offshore wind turbines

Leading Repair
Fig.8 Appropriate number of Cat.4 for different scale offshore wind farms
Type Transportations Spare parts description
time time
M1 Cat1
Heavy component,
500h 43h
B. Sensibility Analysis
external crane needed
Heavy component,
In order to find out the reliability of component and the
M2 Cat2 160h 53h availability of offshore WT, sensibility analysis of failure
build up internal crane
M3 Cat3
Small parts, permanent
48h 12.4h
frequency is carried out and shown in Fig.9.According to
internal crane Fig.9, availability of offshore WT is more sensitive to the
Small or no parts,
M4 Cat4
outside
8h 5h reliability of invertor, gear box and electrical system. It
suggests using more reliable electrical systems, gear boxes and
A. Availability Analysis and transporting vehicles invertors to improve the availability of offshore WT.
According to Tab.1, the failure frequency of the offshore
WT is 1.55 occ/yr. The availability of the offshore WT is
about 0.9935 just considering the repair time. The availability
decreases to 0.9579 considering the waiting time of offshore
weather conditions and logistics. Involving the insufficiency
of transporting vehicles, the availability decreases to 0.8815.
The results show that weather conditions and logistical
supports take considerable downtimes of offshore WTs.
As the transporting vehicles contribute not only to the
availability but also to the maintenance budget, it is very
important to find out the relations between Ao of offshore WT
and the amount of transporting vehicles. The results presented Fig.9 Sensibility Analysis of failure frequency
in Fig.6 illustrate that the increment of transportations of Cat.1,
Cat.2 and Cat.3 have small improvements to the availability.
This means that one transporting vehicle of Cat.1, Cat.2 and
Cat.3 each is enough for the maintenance of this offshore farm.
0.883
Cat.3

0.8825
Availability

0.882

Cat.1 and Cat.2

0.8815
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Number of transportations of Cat.1, Cat.2 and Cat.3
Fig.6 Sensibility Analysis of the amount of Cat.1, Cat.2 and Cat.3
Further study shows that one transporting vehicle of Cat.1,
Cat.2 each is still enough for the offshore wind farm with
2000 WTs. When NWT exceeds 300, more Cat.3 is needed. Fig.10 Sensibility Analysis of leading time for spare parts
The number of Cat.4 has significant influence on the Spare parts management is also an important part of the
availability for its higher frequency of use. Insufficient Cat.4 offshore wind farm O&M. It affects the availability and also the
leads to a low availability and too many Cat.4s do not help too cost of spare parts system. This study aims to find out the
necessity of modifying the stock size. Variations of leading time REFERENCES
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