New software tool aims to cut maintenance costs for offshore wind turbines

As Yashwant Sinha, a PhD Research Student at the University, explains, the novel software package contains a variety of modules related to various aspects of offshore wind turbine operation and maintenance (O&M) activities, including condition monitoring, financial management, resource management, vendor management and maintenance planning.

“As such, this is an attempt to develop a comprehensive and smart maintenance management system. You may like to compare this to ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] software – but in this instance it is dedicated to wind turbines,” says Sinha.

Ultimately, the hope is that the new tool will be useful to offshore wind energy developers for a variety of tasks, including predicting and analysing turbine failures, as well as for making decisions on types of maintenance activities and producing an estimate of the cost of maintenance execution. In the future, Sinha reveals that the RGU team also proposes to integrate existing wind turbine SCADA systems (software designed for the remote supervision and control of wind turbines and wind parks) with the tool in an effort to further automate key processes.

“This tool will be centrally located on a server and its contents will be available through intranet and internet to local and remote users. So an operator will be able to work with his wind farm from any place,” he says.

The project, slated for completion in 2017, is currently being developed for commercial application and Sinha believes it will be useful for wind farms operating any make or model of wind turbine.

By Andrew Williams