Use of Petri Nets to Model the Maintenance of Wind Turbines

With large expansion plans for the offshore wind turbine industry, there has never been a greater need for effective operations and maintenance. The two main problems with the current operations and maintenance of an offshore wind turbine are the cost and availability. In this work, a simulation model has been produced of the maintenance process for a wind turbine with the aim of developing a procedure that can be used to optimise the process. This initial model considers three types of maintenance—periodic, conditional and corrective—and also considers the weather in order to determine the accessibility of the turbine. Petri nets have been designed to simulate each type of maintenance and weather conditions. It has been found that Petri nets are a very good method to model the maintenance process because of their dynamic modelling and adaptability and their ability to test optimisation techniques. Because of their versatility, Petri net models are developed for both system hardware and the maintenance processes, and these are combined in an efficient and concise manner. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[1]  Tongdan Jin,et al.  Condition based maintenance optimization for wind power generation systems under continuous monitoring , 2011 .

[2]  Mohammed Kishk,et al.  Wind Turbine Maintenance Optimisation: Principles of Quantitative Maintenance Optimisation , 2007 .

[3]  Christopher A. Walford,et al.  Wind Turbine Reliability: Understanding and Minimizing Wind Turbine Operation and Maintenance Costs , 2006 .

[4]  Antoine Grall,et al.  Modelling multicomponent systems to quantify reliability centred maintenance strategies , 2011 .

[5]  Tsang-Jung Chang,et al.  Assessment of wind characteristics and wind turbine characteristics in Taiwan , 2003 .

[6]  John Andrews,et al.  A modelling approach to railway track asset management , 2013 .

[7]  L. Bertling,et al.  Maintenance Management of Wind Power Systems Using Condition Monitoring Systems—Life Cycle Cost Analysis for Two Case Studies , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.

[8]  S. K. Yang,et al.  A PETRI NET APPROACH TO EARLY FAILURE DETECTION AND ISOLATION FOR PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE , 1998 .

[9]  L. Rademakers.  Assessment and Optimisation of Operation and Maintenance of Offshore Wind Turbines , 2003 .

[10]  Andrea Bondavalli,et al.  Modeling and Analysis of a Scheduled Maintenance System: a DSPN Approach , 2004, Comput. J..

[11]  David McMillan,et al.  Quantification of Condition Monitoring Benefit for Offshore Wind Turbines , 2007 .

[12]  Lennart Karlsson,et al.  Modelling and simulation of functional product system availability and support costs , 2012 .

[13]  M. B. Zaayer,et al.  Reliability, availability and maintenance aspects of large-scale offshore wind farms, a concepts study , 2001 .

[14]  Jay Lee,et al.  Production line simulation using STPN for maintenance scheduling , 2010, J. Intell. Manuf..

[15]  María Isabel Blanco.  The economics of wind energy , 2009 .

[16]  Zineb Simeu-Abazi,et al.  Maintenance integration in manufacturing systems by using stochastic Petri nets , 1999 .

[17]  Yu Ding,et al.  Simulation of wind farm operations and maintenance using discrete event system specification , 2011, Simul..

[18]  Zineb Simeu-Abazi,et al.  Maintenance Integration in Manufacturing Systems: From the Modeling Tool to Evaluation , 2001 .

[19]  Yu Ding,et al.  Simulation of wind farm operations and maintenance using discrete event system specification , 2011 .

[20]  John Andrews,et al.  A track ballast maintenance and inspection model for a rail network , 2013 .

[21]  László Monostori,et al.  A system for the detailed scheduling of wind farm maintenance , 2011 .