Optimal maintenance policy for offshore wind systems

Employing maintenance threshold plays a critical step in determining an optimal maintenance policy for an offshore wind system to reduce maintenance costs while increasing system reliability. Considering the limited works on this topic, we propose a two-stage procedure to determine the optimal maintenance thresholds for multiple components of an offshore wind power system in order to minimize maintenance costs while achieving the highest possible system reliability. First, using genetic algorithms, a dynamic strategy is developed to determine the maintenance thresholds of individual components where the cost of maintenance and the rate of failure are critical. Then, fuzzy multi-objective programming is applied to find the system’s optimal maintenance threshold considering all components. A variety of factors including weather conditions, system reliability, power generation losses, and electricity market price are carefully considered to enhance the system’s reliability and reduce the costs of maintenance. When maintenance threshold results are compared, component-wise versus system-wise, an average system savings of 1.19% for maintenance cost is obtained while the system reliability is increased by 1.62% on average.