A new system for wind farm operations and maintenance is developed by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) using data from energy company Essent/RWE.
The system collects and analyses data from offshore wind farms and is used in order to improve the cost-reducing strategy for operations and maintenance. The cost of operations and maintenance for offshore wind farms is around € 0.03 per kilowatt hour of electricity and according to ECN these costs can be reduced by a third in the space of ten years. Wind farms produce large quantities of data: hundreds of sensors on the turbines collect and send data. All of this is collected within the O&M system and organized for fast processing. Essent/RWE is providing ECN with operational data to test the O&M system using real information and ECN's Operations & Maintenance System is now ready for launch. The O&M system is an important contributor to enabling cost price reduction and has been developed within the FLOW programme. FLOW aims to achieve cost reductions for large offshore wind farms and stimulate Dutch companies to innovate in this fast-growing sector.