A concept for a holistic risk-based operation and maintenance strategy for wind turbines

Operational wind turbines are highly loaded structures. Especially the high amount of load cycles-up to 10⁹ –, leads to the conclusion that these renewable energy structures are in need of a suitable structural health monitoring and management strategy. In times of energy transition from conventional power plants to renewable power plants a safe and reliable operation of these assets is a premise. The paper presented here introduces an approach on determining risk-based operation and maintenance strategies for wind turbines. The approach combines Bayesian decision analysis with the concepts known in structural reliability analysis. Information from sensors can be used in probabilistic models to update the incomplete knowledge of the state of nature. They are a cost-effective risk-reduction measure and can be used for uncertainty quantification and reduction of uncertainties. Therefore the combination of the described methods is able to optimize maintenance and inspection activities according to the associated costs.