Modelling of maintenance strategy of offshore wind farms based multi-agent system

The maintenance of offshore wind turbines is a complex and costly task which represents a barrier to the development of this source of energy. The combination of the size of the farm and the size of the turbines themselves, the distance from the coast and difficult meteorological conditions make the choice of maintenance strategy difficult. Several modern maintenance techniques have been tried in order to reduce cost and time of maintenance. In this paper we propose a hybrid model of maintenance based on multi-agent systems, which allows for the modelling of systems with dynamic interactions between multiple parts. A multi-criteria decision algorithm has been developed to allow analysis and choosing of different maintenance strategies. A cost model including maintenance action cost, energy loss and installation of monitoring system cost has been presented. A simulator has been developed using NetLogo software and this is presented along with initial results at the end of this paper. These results show that employing a new hybrid maintenance strategy which we propose could increase wind farm productivity and reduce maintenance cost.

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