Problem Statement

Floating offshore wind has now come to prominence with the launch of numerous test/pilot projects in the UK and Europe [1]. In order to secure the decarbonisation targets, floating offshore wind needs to reach its full capacity and the potential sites are quite abundant. For companies such as EDF, while ensuring the technical due diligence on the major components like the floater and turbine, there is a huge uncertainty as to which O&M strategy and technologies should be used to minimise OPEX costs.

Floating offshore wind offers the possibility to perform maintenance in-situ or to tow the whole device to a port - the uncertainties around weather risk, decision making around which maintenance activities to prioritise and also the main technologies to reduce human enable intervention for first line diagnostics/repair will play a major part in defining a suitable O&M strategy.

This PhD project will leverage expertise from two Univeristy of Strathclyde departments. Electronics and Electrical Engineering dept (McMillan, Carroll) will provide the advanced OPEX modelling [2] and reliability assessment capability to characterise the floating wind system. Dept of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering (Collu) will bring specific floating wind and advanced hydrodynamic knowledge to the project [3], which will be crucial in assessing the realism of proposed 'tow to shore' O&M cases.

Specific objectives of the PhD project:

- Assess how expertise of the O&G industry in floating support can de-risk maintenance for floating offshore wind sites.

- Model and quantify, using Strathclyde EEE and NAOME models, how much automation can be implemented to reduce OPEX costs, and work closely with industry to ensure any assumptions made regarding the capability of automating such systems are realistic.

- Analyse and evaluate the type of vessels which would be used to perform O&M in this context. Work closely with the vessel supply to understand capabilities and limitations and embed these within the technical and economic models.

- Explore the role and potential impact of condition monitoring in the specific context of floating wind and understand what (if anything) would change about the use of Remaining useful life (RUL) [4] in the context of offshore wind.

[1] Hannon, Matthew and Topham, Eva and Dixon, James and McMillan, David and Collu, Maurizio (2019) Offshore Wind, Ready to Float? Global and UK Trends in the Floating Offshore Wind Market. [Report] https://doi.org/10.17868/69501

[2] Carroll, James and McDonald, Alasdair and Dinwoodie, Iain and McMillan, David and Revie, Matthew and Lazakis, Iraklis (2017) Availability, operation and maintenance costs of offshore wind turbines with different drive train configurations. Wind Energy, 20 (2). pp. 361-378. ISSN 1095-4244 https://doi.org/10.1002/we.2011

[3] M Borg, A Shires, M Collu (2014) Offshore floating vertical axis wind turbines, dynamics modelling state of the art. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 39, 1214-1225 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.096

[4] James Carroll, Sofia Koukoura, Alasdair McDonald, Anastasis Charalambous, Stephan Weiss, Stephen McArthur (2018) Wind turbine gearbox failure and remaining useful life prediction using machine learning techniques. Wind Energy (Wiley) https://doi.org/10.1002/we.2290