Availability centred maintenance for offshore wind farms

Purpose – Maintenance planning is a complicated decision-making process that involves the major stakeholders and the main life-cycle phases of an engineering system. The purpose of this paper is to propose an availability-centred maintenance planning approach for offshore wind farms, with special focus on the early system design phase. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed approach is based on a stepwise procedure that integrates logistics consideration into reliability-centred maintenance. For each step, the essential methods for systematic analysis and documentation are introduced. Findings – Practical information from current offshore wind farms and lessons learned from relevant industries are included to exemplify and justify the implementation of the proposed approach. In a general way, the approach shows that valuable input can be provided to decision making about maintainability and maintenance planning. Furthermore, the approach facilitates the initial maintenance plan to be adjusted and improved upon as additional operating experience becomes available. Research limitations/implications – Offshore wind energy is still an industry in its infancy with an attendant high degree of confidentiality. There is scarcely any detailed practical information available for the production of a case study on this topic. However, the current paper’s theoretical basis may be applied to identify current and future knowledge gaps, for the development of more detailed guidelines as established in the further research. Originality/value – Maintenance planning of offshore wind farms is an area of current interest, although often the focus is on achieving cost reductions and not on the formal development of such a systematic approach as conceived in this paper.