A system for the detailed scheduling of wind farm maintenance

As the share of wind energy increases on the global energy market, the efficient operation of wind farms gains an ever growing significance. Among operational decisions, the planning and scheduling of maintenance operations are crucial for the availability of turbines, as well as for the operational costs. The paper introduces a system that performs the detailed scheduling of maintenance operations at a set of wind farms maintained by common personnel. The scheduling problem is modeled and solved as a mixed-integer linear program. The system constitutes a module of an integrated framework for condition monitoring, diagnosis, and maintenance of wind turbines. (C) 2011 CIRP.