⠿ OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES

Artificial intelligence and predictive

maintenance

Project preInO combines artificial intelligence with

automatic self-organization to optimize maintenance
and repair at sea by setting in motion the corresponding
personnel, material and spare parts logistics
by Marco Lewandowski and Stephan Oelker
Universität Bremen

Perfect O
ffshore wind turbines in
deep-sea locations, also referred
to as farshore wind farms, as a
general rule contain technical

timing
systems such as condition monitoring and
data acquisition platforms to assess the
condition of the system or its components.
Nevertheless, the planning, processing
and controlling of maintenance tasks that
are substantially based on information
from these tools rarely work in practice
under the uncertain conditions of maritime
facilities. Because many faults can hardly
be recognized in advance, the maintenance
process most often starts after the
occurrence of defects, including logistics or

36 ⠿ MARINE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL | SEPTEMBER 2014

 OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES ⠿

MARINE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL | SEPTEMBER 2014 ⠿ 37

 ⠿ OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES
ABOVE: Condition information and processing of operative maintenance tasks is based on various data sources
even procurement or picking of spare parts.
Thus, isolated condition-monitoring tools
and condition-based maintenance strategies
do not promise to achieve great success in
this field.
However, these are the first requirements
of a proactive maintenance strategy, which
uses data and information from several
sources and intelligently condenses it into
relevant events and recommendations
for operators. The research conducted
in German project preInO, funded by the
German Federal Ministry of Economic
Affairs and Energy, aims to use existing
technical monitoring tools and
state-of-the-art methodologies to assess
the condition of systems, taking into
account the circumstances of operation and
maintenance. This includes, for instance,
periodic inspection as well as condition-
based troubleshooting just before a failure
occurs. Data-driven approaches will be able
to provide priority estimations and give
instruction in order to plan, perform and
38 ⠿ MARINE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL | SEPTEMBER 2014
control maintenance measures dynamically
based on the topical requirements. In the
future, it is believed that wind turbines
themselves will gain an intelligence (due to
systems and algorithms) which gives them
the ability to make decisions, i.e.- I need
maintenance, I need a spare part.
Today’s situation
The economic use of the sea is continuous.
Besides its role for global trade, i.e. the
shipping of goods between continents,
the number of maritime facilities has risen
steadily over the years. A major reason
for this development is energy production
from offshore wind. While wind farms
are generally operated remotely without
constant on-the-spot supervision, essentially
farshore wind farms have high requirements
regarding maintenance operations and
accompanying logistics. The figures from
such wind farms indicate a high relevance
for the operations and maintenance phase
(O&M phase) with respect to the related
costs. Approximately 25% of the total cost of
ownership for a life of 20 years is linked to
the O&M phase. A main cost is the treatment
of unexpected faults, which might include
considerable costs for personnel, material
and spare parts as well as logistics.
While the availability of logistical
resources is crucial for several maintenance
actions, particularly the exchange of large
components, there are further uncertainties
in the offshore context. In particular, these
include technical challenges for O&M
including health and security concepts,
certifications, access systems and weather
conditions. Critical limitations with respect
to maintenance operations already exist in
case of waves higher than 2.5m and winds
greater than 20m/sec. Because of these
limitations, ships’ accessibility to a farshore
wind farm in the German North Sea is
assumed to be 20% of the days of the year.
Regarding its economic relevance, a wind
farm such as Alpha Ventus in the North Sea,
with a total of 60MW windpower capacity

installed, can have downtime costs of about
E600,000 a year.
Traditional maintenance approaches
and maritime-specific challenges
The described conditions offshore illustrate
the difference between performing
maintenance tasks at onshore facilities
compared with maritime facilities such
as wind turbines. Key aspects, such as
operating plants remotely and
encompassing the difficulties in accessing
them in the event of failures, illustrate
that traditional maintenance strategies
fail to have the desired effect of efficiency
and effectiveness.
In general, one can distinguish between
corrective and preventive maintenance.
Corrective maintenance – also known as
run-to-failure or reactive maintenance –
means that measures and tasks are taken
after a failure. The preferred maintenance
strategy is moving to a preventive predict-
and-prevent approach, but how does this
work in practice? Preventive maintenance
strategies try to avoid possible failures,
either by time-based maintenance, which
means that measures will be carried out
after a predefined operating interval or
after time-dependent intervals. Otherwise
maintenance can be condition-based, which
often employs a condition-monitoring system
to observe various indicators of the system.
In theory, maintenance can be planned
whenever one or more indicators show that
something is going to fail.
In reality, maintenance at today’s
farshore wind farms is actually a mixture of
several strategies. During yearly planned
maintenance, mainly inspections, services
and smaller repairs are conducted. The
A typical wind farm
in the North Sea can
have downtime costs
of about e600,000
a year
downtime can last up to a week. The
maintenance strategy is principally
time-based. Basic condition monitoring,
using supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) systems is conducted,
while further specialized condition-
monitoring systems observe crucial
components, such as the main gear and rotor
bearing by means of vibration analysis.
These systems are used to detect failures
before they occur, to prevent subsequent
damage, which leads to maintenance
planning based on conditions by having
a short- to medium-term perspective. One
essential focus is to avoid the cost-intensive
exchange of large components. But there will
still be some maintenance tasks that cannot
AUTHOR Q&A:
What windfarms are actively involved in
the project?
Our main focus is on the wind farm Alpha
Ventus in the German North Sea. The
project is part of the research initiative
Research at Alpha Ventus (RAVE).
What partners are involved?
The project involves a consortium
funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for
Economic Affairs and Energy. It is ran in
cooperation with the turbine manufacturer
Senvion from Hamburg and the software
developing enterprise SWMS from
Oldenburg.
What is one of the most common faults
for a farshore wind farm?
It’s difficult to postulate, but even a
relatively low-cost supporting device such
as the azimuth could lead to high losses
in the event of failure.
MARINE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL | SEPTEMBER 2014 ⠿ 39
OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES ⠿
Approximately 25%
of the total cost of
ownership for a life of
20 years is linked to
the O&M phase
be foreseen, so some corrective measures
still have to be taken. They lead to short-
term troubleshooting, which might require
expensive helicopter services for personnel
and material transport.
Although condition-based maintenance
using enhanced condition-monitoring
technologies promises to be the most
cost-beneficial strategy, there are several
obstacles. The most crucial is that operators
normally have limited knowledge about
failure modes and, even more important,
need to know the relationship between the
observed data and failures. The problem
of reliable sensor-data should not be
neglected. Finally, using isolated condition-
based maintenance tools, as is done at wind
And the most critical?
Offshore, every failure that leads to
downtime is critical due to opportunity
costs and logistical costs. Therefore,
main components such as gears, rotor
bearings, etc, are essentially critical due
to unexpected expenses, because they
need special ships for the repair.
According to your research so far, are
you able to predict any potential savings
for operators?
On the one hand, we try to replace
the components just before they
break, which is driven from the idea
of condition-based or predictive
maintenance. On the other, we want to
optimize other traditional maintenance
measures by combining work or
rearranging the scope based on
fundamental decision support. Therefore,
cost savings of 10-15% seem realistic.
 ⠿ OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES
ABOVE: Scheduling of maintenance tasks based on conditon information is a core project focus
turbines today, is not equivalent to a holistic
condition-based maintenance strategy.
Although 20-25% of maintenance costs
might be saved by conserving resources
simultaneously, business cases for holistic
condition-based maintenance strategies are
hard to calculate and justify.
Opportunities for proactive
maintenance concepts
As there are many maintenance challenges
for offshore wind farms, there can
reasonably be several approaches to
maintenance. Because of the availability of
technical systems for condition monitoring
and data acquisition, condition-based
maintenance seems to be the strategy to
follow. But will sensor technology and
data analysis ever remove the need for
visual inspections or campaign-based
measurements? It is unlikely for the near
future; however, following the basic idea
of proactive maintenance, measures could
contribute to improving the case-specific
best option for a maintenance strategy.
This is clear for condition-based
measures in particular, as better time
prediction or better data mining would
lead to a longer planning horizon. Anyway,
the proactive paradigm is also valid for
planned time-based maintenance or
inspection where one could rearrange
fixed time intervals or adjust the scope of
an inspection if the data indicates that the
considered object is in good condition. Even
corrective measures can become more
predictable, with statistical data providing
40 ⠿ MARINE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL | SEPTEMBER 2014
expected lead times for repair or predicted
residual lifetimes. Basically, there is no need
to change the way measures take place at
the moment, but making each individual
measure more efficient should lead to an
overall efficiency gain.
To give the best possible forecast of the
state of a component, data, such as sensor
values, statistical data, past maintenance
data, employee know-how, weather data, as
well as inventory and personnel planning,
are analyzed and automatically linked
to a relevant event. The prioritization of
detected errors, the dynamic planning of
the scope of the service and the scheduling
of the workflow with associated logistics
operations using decentralized control
systems are investigated within the project
to make possible a proactive maintenance
strategy for offshore wind turbines.
It should be mentioned that the
assessment of condition is based on the
state of research, including methodical
data collection, data mining and complex
event processing, as well as prognostic
and diagnostic technologies based on
artificial intelligence.
Progress achieved and future
prospects
Proactive maintenance is data-driven, which
means that data from different sources is
combined and condensed into information
and action-oriented knowledge. Isolated
condition-monitoring systems become
much more useful by combining data in
this way. Accordingly, infrastructure and
frameworks for data management have
already been developed within the first period
of the project. In addition, uniform access to
data has been established so that processing
of data with a number of algorithms and
methodologies can take place. The concept
involves open access to this so-called
processing engine in terms of using different
programming languages, mathematical tools
and spreadsheets. The project uses numerous
real-data samples from offshore wind farms.
It is the outcome of a number of
methodologies that should enable the
condensed assessment of the condition of
components. This is particularized within
the project at the moment and goes along
with the further use of this information for
the scheduling of resources and logistics.
From a medium-term perspective, the project
will demonstrate and validate the developed
technology in the context of offshore wind
farms. As a matter of course, further research
will include the transfer of the investigation
into other application domains. \\
Marco Lewandowski graduated in industrial
engineering and management. He worked as a
research scientist at the BIBA – Bremer Institut für
Produktion und Logistik GmbH, focusing on enabling
technologies and smart devices for production
and logistics environments. A main application
domain encompasses maintenance in maritime
environments. Currently he is leading a demonstration
and application center for key technologies in
logistics at the University of Bremen. Stephan Oelker
graduated in industrial engineering and management
and works as a research scientist in the BIBA ‘logistics
factory’ division. The focus of his research work is
the development of solutions and concepts for the
operation phase of offshore wind turbines.
Conference speakers
Marco Lewandowski and
Stephan Oelker, Universität Bremen
Paper: Artificial intelligence and
predictive maintenance
More information:
www.marinemaintenanceworldexpo.com