Session: 09-01-14 Fatigue and Structural Analysis

Paper Number: 78352

78352 - A Review of End-of-Life Decision Making for Offshore Wind Turbines 

Humanity is facing a global climate crisis alongside an unmet need to sustainability provide for increasing energy demands. A key challenge faced in the decarbonisation of energy grids is switching from carbon-intensive fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources. Offshore wind is set to play a major role in this across the globe due to its low carbon footprint, higher capacity versus onshore wind and abundance of sites close to population centres. Offshore wind is a relatively young industry, with the majority of installed offshore capacity having occurred in the past 10 years. Despite initial success, there remain unanswered questions over end-of-life decision making and how to effectively manage wind turbine fleets as they approach the end of their 20-25 year life. Three end-of-life options exist for turbines: life extension, repowering and decommissioning. However, with little experience in managing ageing offshore turbines alongside limited guidance and understanding to decide the most sustainable choice, there is a need to update the end-of-life guidelines and improve the decision-making framework. This work aims to complete an analytical review of existing literature on turbine life extension, repowering and decommissioning to identify current industrial practices for decision making. This will lay the groundwork for creating a digital model that can be used to investigate the impact of certain key parameters on the turbine’s health and remaining useful life, as well as for future work in creating a decision support framework to aid in deciding the best end-of-life solution for turbines.

Presenting Author: David Boyd Queen's University Belfast

Authors:

David Boyd Queen's University Belfast
Madjid Karimirad Queen's University Belfast
Vinayagamoothy Sivakumar Queen's University Belfast
Soroosh Jalilvand Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions
Cian Desmond Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions