Wind Power Performance Optimization Considering Redundancy and Opportunistic Maintenance

Abstract

In This paper the redundancy and imperfect opportunistic maintenance optimization of a multi-state weighted k-out-of-n system is formulated. The objective is to determine the k-out-of-n system redundancy level and the maintenance strategy which will minimize the wind farm life cycle cost subject to an availability constraint. A new condition based opportunistic maintenance approach is developed. Different component health state thresholds are introduced for imperfect maintenance of failed subsystems and working subsystems and preventive dispatching of maintenance teams. In addition, a simulation method is developed to evaluate the performance measures of the system considering different types of subsystems, maintenance activation delays and durations, limited number of maintenance teams, and discrete inspection of the system. Also, a multi-seed tabu search heuristic algorithm is also proposed to solve the formulated problem. An application to the optimal design of a wind farm is provided to illustrate the proposed approach.