This chapter has presented the personnel, infrastructure and data issues associated with improving the maintenance, availability and reliability of offshore wind farms. The key factors are shown to be the training of staff, the availability of appropriate access infrastructure and the presentation of appropriate data from the wind farms to those staff to allow that costly infrastructure to be fully exploited. A proposal has been presented for an Offshore Wind Farm Knowledge Management System to handle the SCADA and CMS monitoring data and the accumulated reliability data of the wind farm correlating it with the maintenance logs to provide an integrated system upon which maintenance planning can proceed.

Chapter Contents:

• 8.1 Staff and training
• 8.2 Maintenance methods
• 8.3 Spares
• 8.4 Weather
• 8.5 Access and logistics
• 8.5.1 Distance offshore
• 8.5.2 Vessels without access systems
• 8.5.3 Vessels with access systems
• 8.5.4 Helicopters
• 8.5.5 Fixed installation
• 8.5.6 Mobile jack-up installations
• 8.5.7 Access and logistics conclusions
• 8.6 Data management for maintaining offshore assets
• 8.6.1 Sources and access to data
• 8.6.2 An Offshore Wind Farm Knowledge Management System
• 8.6.2.1 Structure, data flow and the wind farm
• 8.6.2.2 Health monitoring
• 8.6.2.3 Asset management
• 8.6.2.4 Operations management
• 8.6.2.5 Maintenance management
• 8.6.2.6 Field maintenance
• 8.6.2.7 Information management
• 8.6.3 Complete system
• 8.7 Summary: towards an integrated maintenance strategy
• 8.8 References

Inspec keywords: offshore installations; knowledge management; wind power plants; power generation reliability; SCADA systems; personnel; training; power generation planning; maintenance engineering

Other keywords: offshore wind farm knowledge management system; maintenance planning; integrated system; offshore wind farm reliability; personnel; offshore wind turbine maintenance; SCADA; staff training; CMS data monitoring

Subjects: Plant engineering, maintenance and safety; Power system management, operation and economics; Power system planning and layout; Reliability; Wind power plants