Minimizing transportation and installation costs for turbines in offshore wind farms

Building an offshore wind energy facility is an undertaking of large capital investment. The cost of such transportation and installation depends on the time to complete these processes. The cost can be minimized by an optimum selection of variables of transportation and installation operations such as onshore pre-assembly of turbines and their rated power outputs. Other factors such as learning rates for lifting and assembly operation, port-to-farm site distance, vessel deck area and lifting rate of the vessel crane have significant effects on the system cost. A model based on these costs is developed for wind turbine installation and transportation in an offshore wind farm, and the impact of decision variables on total cost of transportation and installation is investigated here. The effects of wind farm and vessel parameters on cost are studied such that an optimal set of system parameters is chosen to minimize the total cost of transportation and installation. A numerical analysis is performed to illustrate the model and to understand the general behavior of different system parameters. The results show that the total cost is significantly impacted by turbine size and pre-assembly method. Also, the scheduled maintenance help reduce the cost significantly that the unscheduled maintenance. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.