Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ROMEO (Reliable OM decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on Offshore wind)

Teaser

The EU is actively promoting Europe’s transition to a low-carbon society and is dedicating huge efforts in reaching a real clean energy transition. This should not only be good for the planet, but also good for the economy and good for consumers. Although in the last years...

Summary

The EU is actively promoting Europe’s transition to a low-carbon society and is dedicating huge efforts in reaching a real clean energy transition. This should not only be good for the planet, but also good for the economy and good for consumers. Although in the last years there is a substantial increase of the power capacity growth of Wind Energy across the EU covering around 11.6% of the EU electricity consumption in 2017, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve the target in 2030 of at least 32% for the share of renewable energy consumed in the EU. Emerging technologies, as Offshore Wind Energy, demand new advanced Operation & Maintenance (O&M) solutions/tools for improving significantly their return of investment (Rol) and their Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) indicator, as well as for performing the reliability and extended life-time of wind turbines (WTs) and wind farms (WF) over the years.

Under this scenario, the Consortium launched the ROMEO project as a strategic initiative to continue leading the offshore wind energy in the EU. The main aim of the ROMEO Project “Reliable O&M decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on offshore wind” is to develop models and tools for early fault detection and diagnosis and prognosis, allowing the transition from calendar base maintenance to condition-based maintenance strategies reducing significantly O&M costs. To that end, a flexible and interoperable IoT platform will provide an advanced analytics ecosystem to better understand the real time behaviour of the main components of the WTs under operation conditions; maximizing their life-time and reducing unexpected major correctives, thus minimizing the OPEX which drastically impact on LCoE of offshore Wind Energy.

The project is structured in three phases: 1) First phase “specifications” will pave the way for other phases, defining the specifications and requirements in order to develop a monitoring strategy for the most relevant and critical components to be further considered; 2) Second phase “models/tools/database” will be devoted to the development of health monitoring systems, diagnosis and prognosis tools for failure detection both at WT components and support structures level, feeding the development of a data acquisition and advanced analytics ecosystem and 3) Third phase “O&M/rollout” will develop and deploy an O&M platform to be validated in three pilot scenarios; the data will serve as input for impact assessment with a special focus on LCoE and replicability. As result of its successful implementation is expected to achieve the following overall objectives:

-Reduction of unexpected major correctives through early fault identification, both in WTG and substructure.
-Improved performance for new and operating off-shore wind power plants and therefore to the cost of energy
-Contribution to the strengthening of the European industrial technology base, thereby creating growth and jobs in Europe
-Contribute to health and safety in the Wind industry
-Generating synergies in the field of O&M strategies with Onshore wind sector
-Laying the foundation to place on the market a set of new products and services

Work performed

During the first one year and half of action, the consortium has made great progresses. The whole Work Packages (WPs) started to be implemented by all partners and promising results have been produced up to date:

-Project requirements have been defined as a solid roadmap to ensure that it is developed under a methodical approach towards a condition monitoring strategy for relevant critical components.
-Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMECA) workshops have been undertaken. The potential failure modes that apply for predictive maintenance have been identified according to their criticality and will be subjected to further study.
-337 failure modes have been identified out of which the 120 most critical have been investigated towards applicability of monitoring systems. For 60 failure modes, a large potential benefit through application of different kinds of monitoring systems has been identified.
-5 physical models have been developed for specific failures on some main turbine components; gearbox, converter, generator, blade bearing and main transformer.
-Data sets are being prepared to train data driven models.
-A review of monitoring technologies and a specification of the support structure monitoring problem for offshore wind farms has been carried out.
-After an optimal sensor placement study for Wikinger OSS and one foundation a short-term measurement campaign has been implemented to better understand platform behaviour.
-The ICT architectures of the 3 ROMEO demonstrators has been developed.
-The backbone of O&M Information Management Platform is already developed, and the O&M information management system is already configured.
-A general framework for testing has been established.
-Additionally, a review of existing life cycle costing and O&M tools as a first step to develop of a high-fidelity cost/revenue model for the purpose of impact assessment of the outcomes of the ROMEO research project has been done.

Final results

A significant progress beyond the state of the art will be achieved thanks to the ROMEO project. Below, the main research fields have been identified:

-Third generation of WTG components Condition Monitoring technologies.
- Data driven models for early fault detection, diagnosis and prognosis
-Advanced low-cost monitoring techniques at WTG substructure level.
-Extreme Transaction and Processing Architectures for data acquisition and analytics ecosystem.
-Ensuring proper integration of multiple data streams in O&M Information Management.
-Smart and advanced wind farm O&M strategies
-Innovative cost models to improve LCoE and provide replicability strategies

This progress beyond the state of the art will allow the future fulfilment of the expected impacts after the end of the ROMEO project:

This progress beyond the state of the art will allow the future fulfilment of the expected impacts after the end of the ROMEO project:

-The action will result in the reduction of component failure and increased reliability.
-The development of innovative solutions and tools will result in more reliable wind turbines and plants.
-It is expected that the output of the project will significantly contribute to an improved performance for new and operating off-shore wind power plants and therefore to the cost of energy.
-Presented tools and solutions might have an exploitation potential in the onshore wind sector.
-The action should contribute to the strengthening the European industrial technology base, thereby creating growth and jobs in Europe.
-Solutions will contribute to health and safety in the Wind industry.
-Impact to substructure and soil monitoring.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.romeoproject.eu/.