Wind farm life cycle cost modelling based on oversizing capacity under load sharing configuration

Renewable energies are becoming the norm and as such they are responsible for the energy supply of large cities, therefore, there is a need for this energy sources to be able to deliver a determined level of service. The latter is especially complex for wind farms due to the high stress and rough climate conditions in which they operate. A higher service level is usually achieved by injecting budget on the operation of plants, namely, maintenance and asset management to reduce the risk of failure and outage. This article proposes a methodology to study the improvement of the service level, availability, and reliability of a plant from the design stage through oversizing the allocation of Wind Turbine Generators (WTG) without compromising the project Life Cycle Cost, indeed, results reveal up to a 2.11% of improvement on availability, a reduction of up to 18.48% on corrective maintenance costs and up to a 1.44% reduction of total differential costs. Furthermore, the evidence found suggests that the load sharing perspective imprints less stress on the WTG, enabling higher service levels at reduced costs and better results for maintenance and asset management planning, thus improving efficiency focussing on preventive maintenance and reliability improving.

Automated summary

This article proposes a method to improve the service level, availability, and reliability of wind farms by oversizing the allocation of Wind Turbine Generators (WTG). Results show that this method can increase availability by 2.11%, reduce corrective maintenance costs by 18.48%, and decrease total differential costs by 1.44%. Furthermore, it suggests that load sharing perspective can reduce stress on WTGs, enabling higher service levels at reduced costs and better results for maintenance and asset management planning, thus improving efficiency and reliability.