MAINTENANCE PRACTICES IN WIND POWER SYSTEMS: A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

This paper reviews, analyses, discusses and summarises the recent practices in the area of maintenance of wind power systems. It is based on a comprehensive literature review of relevant published studies. Systematically, a classification of relevant publications was performed based on preliminary review. The literature was divided into content themes based on relevant life cycle processes of wind power systems. Knowing that large percentage of total life cycle cost of wind power systems is attributed to operation and maintenance activities, which is more significant with offshore farms. A considerable portion of this cost stems from the consequences of the inherent reliability and maintainability decisions made during the early phases of planning and conceptual design of the system. Maintenance as a support function has a role in gaining and maintaining competitive advantages. Therefore, it is very important for all relevant stakeholders to be a ware of the role of maintenance in achieving sustainable and competitive energy supply. More cooperation between owners, operators of wind farms and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) is needed to design better based on maintenance experience. it was found that most of the goals and challenges identified in wind power systems maintenance practices are already achieved in other industrial context, e.g. manufacturing industries. There is a need to do more research projects to investigate how to apply these practices in an efficient and effective way with wind power systems. Right maintenance practices in wind power systems are necessary to build and provide secure, sustainable and competitive energy supply for the future.