A Review of End-of-Life Decision Making for Offshore Wind Turbines

Abstract

Abstract Offshore wind is set to play a major role in the global shift to renewable energy generation due to its low carbon footprint, high capacity factor and availability of suitable sites close to population centres. Offshore wind is a relatively young industry, with the majority of installed capacity having occurred in the past 10 years. As the industry matures, questions related to the effective management of ageing assets and end-of-life decision making are becoming increasingly important. Broadly speaking, three end-of-life options exist for turbines: life extension, repowering and decommissioning. There is a need to update the end-of-life guidelines and improve the decision-making framework to identify the most sustainable option for a particular offshore wind farm. This paper reviews the current criteria for deciding the most suitable end-of-life solution for offshore wind turbines, with a particular focus on the structural health of monopile foundations. This will lay the groundwork for creating a digital model which can be used to investigate the impact of certain key parameters on the turbine’s health and remaining useful life, as well as for future work in creating a decision support framework to aid in deciding the most sustainable end-of-life solution for offshore wind turbines.