Efficiency and effectiveness of wind farms—keys to cost optimized operation and maintenance

Operation and maintenance (O&M) cost will be the key to the economic viability of large offshore wind farms planned worldwide. In order to support investment decisions a systematic mathematical approach to the O&M cost contributions is required prior to detailed engineering or even construction of the wind farm.Adopting the general terms of efficiency, productivity and effectiveness defined for production processes we introduce the Wind Farm Process and its Total Overall Equipment Effectiveness (TotalOEE) by considering wind farms performing a transformation of produced electrical energy to delivered (sold) electrical energy. This transformation process consists of an installation, i.e. properly selected wind energy converters and their arrangement to form a wind farm, and of a process comprising operation and maintenance. Both are the subject of optimization to maximize the annual energy output by minimizing the different kinds of losses.In a systematic approach to the causes and nature of losses in wind farms the terms theoretical production time, available production time and valuable production time are redefined in unit full load hours. Then, a calculation scheme is developed to quantify wind farm production losses in terms of planned or unplanned downtimes and speed losses and to relate the associated reduction of revenues ΔR to the theoretical maximum of annual wind park revenues R_theo(park). It leads to the simple equation ΔR/R_theo = TotalOEE – 1 < 0.