Function
Operations is the management of the asset such as health and safety, control and operation of the asset including wind turbines and balance of plant, remote site monitoring, environmental monitoring, electricity sales, administration, marine operations supervision, operation of vessels and quayside infrastructure, management of spares and back-office tasks.
Who is involved
The owner of the wind farm typically creates a special-purpose vehicle to operate the project. This may have several shareholders, one of which is likely to take a lead role.
Operations tasks for offshore wind farms are typically provided by the majority wind farm owner.
Some aspects of wind farm operations are contracted to specialist suppliers contracted by the developer.
Key facts
An onshore control room provides access to detailed real-time and historical data for the wind turbines, substation, met station, offshore crew and vessels. Systems ensure that the operations duty manager knows where all personnel and vessels are located. This control room is often responsible for the monitoring of multiple sites.
Wind farms are monitored remotely on an ongoing basis using SCADA and condition monitoring systems and periodically by way of active inspections, including of subsea infrastructure.
A senior authorised person (SAP) is always available with coordination responsibility for the switching operations of all high voltage equipment. The industry is steadily adopting more advanced data driven approaches to maximising asset value. In addition to hardware-related activity, environmental monitoring is carried out to understand the effect of the wind farm on wildlife and the local environment. Wind farms can be broadly categorised as having:
- An onshore base (at an OMS port) using crew transfer vessels (CTVs) for access, or from a service operation vessel (SOV), or
- An offshore base, for wind farms greater than about 40 nm and greater than 400 MW, which is likely to be a SOV, although fixed platforms have been used.
In practice, wind farm operators adopt a flexible approach, particularly during peaks of activity. In both cases, helicopters may be used in addition to CTVs and SOVs. Careful planning of routine and unscheduled activities with due consideration of weather conditions and availability of spares and specialist vessels is critical.
For groups of smaller wind farms located in the same geographical area, it can be cost effective to monitor and control them all from a single operation base.
