Offshore wind turbine design - Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design - page 387

combine the rotor design with drive-train confi guration studies needs to be imple-
mented, which could ultimately contribute to reduce the COE.
6.3 Service model
A solid and viable offshore service model is extremely important for any success-
ful offshore wind project. The basic philosophy will evolve around a global per-
formance and product data warehouse specifi cally aimed for autonomous offshore
operations.
The performance data from offshore wind power plants can be processed in the
global data warehouse, which will feed information to different areas. The operat-
ing information could be used by future product development teams or for existing
product improvements. The service information will be used for making contrac-
tual service agreements, remote monitoring and diagnostics and knowledge-based
maintenance. Customers can use the availability information to understand the
capacity factor and overall plant health.
Contractual services has a major emphasis on developing new technology tools
to support the offshore wind business. The new technology tools are aimed at
improving reliability and availability, extending parts lives and enhancing plant
performance.
7 Conclusion
Offshore wind turbines need to achieve high reliability and availability at low COE,
which is competitive to other energy sources. The chapter identifi es innovative
options for new foundation concepts, construction techniques, rotor design, drive
train and electrical system while optimizing the total life cycle cost of offshore
wind power plants. Turbine design will need to incorporate best technologies and
practices from the land-based turbines while incorporating lessons learned from
fi rst generation offshore pilot projects to develop a new robust turbine concept
optimized for offshore operations. Optimum turbine size will be determined for
locations and is expected to be in the multi- megawatt to 5-7 MW range suitable
for more than 25 m water depths.
References
[1] US wind resource map, DOE/NREL Wind powering America program, 2009,
http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp
[2] Musial, W. & Butterfi eld, S., Future for offshore wind energy in the United
States (NREL/CP-500-36313), EnergyOcean 2004, Palm Beach, Florida,
June 28-29, 2004
[3] Ali, M., Zheng, D., Kothnur, V. & Grimley, R., Offshore wind energy genera-
tion in the United States - Challenges and R&D needs. Global Windpower
2004 Conference & Exhibition , Chicago, USA, 2004.