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Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice
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Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A3: Wind, Wave and Tidal Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 August 2024) | Viewed by 7864

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Abbas Mehrad Kazemi Amiri

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Wind Energy & Control Centre, EEE, Faculty of Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XW, UK
Interests: mechanics and dynamics; on/offshore wind energy systems (electro-mechanical and structural sub-systems); experimental modal analysis; fatigue load analysis and lifetime extension assessment
Prof. Dr. Alasdair McDonald

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Energy Systems, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3DW, UK
Interests: electrical power conversion; wind energy; offshore renewable energy
Dr. Rebecca Windemer

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Ln, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
Interests: environmental planning; onshore wind repowering; renewable energy planning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There are now a significant number of wind farms that have reached or are about to reach the end of their design or consent life. Wind farm owners and operators are often faced with difficult decisions about whether to decommission, repower or extend the lifetime of these assets. These decisions will have an impact on the communities, wider economy and environment of where the wind farms are operating and will also have a potentially significant impact on energy generation.

This Special Issue is dedicated to studies that help make those end-of-life decisions both easier and more robust. We welcome papers that help evaluate any of those options and those contributions to improving this decision-making process and dealing with the inherent uncertainties across a wide range of topics.

The submission topics, with no order of importance, include, but are not limited to:

  • End-of-life decision-making (decommissioning, repowering, and life extension);
  • Analysis of social, environmental, and economic impacts of end-of-life choices;
  • Asset management and legislative aspects of end-of-life decisions;
  • Consideration of the planning and permitting system for end-of-life decisions;
  • Decision-making tools development and case study analysis;
  • End of life options assessment based on optimisation techniques, stochastic modelling, etc.;
  • Considerations of communities in end-of-life decision making, including social acceptance.

Determination of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) and extension of service life:

  • Advanced methodologies to estimate RUL in on/offshore wind, repowering and lifetime extension: components include those in structural, mechanical and electro-mechanical subsystems;
  • Stochastic methodology development: Uncertainty quantification and risk/safety assessment in lifetime extension;
  • Monitoring, inspection and measurement: examples are but not limited to novel monitoring methods, measurement devices/sensors and inspection techniques;
  • Novel control, devices and operation strategy to improve performance and reduce service life loads: retuning the control system over service life, machine learning based controller design, devices in terms of additions, e.g., vortex generators, vibration dampers, lubricant additives, etc.;
  • Operation and maintenance strategy and reliability analysis over service life;
  • Data-driven (machine learning) and statistical methods: non-conventional techniques for loads and damage assessment as well as end of life analysis.

Dr. Abbas Mehrad Kazemi Amiri
Prof. Dr. Alasdair McDonald
Dr. Rebecca Windemer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • onshore wind
  • offshore wind
  • repowering
  • life-extension
  • decommissioning
  • life prediction
  • failure analysis
  • remaining useful life
  • fatigue loads
  • load mitigation
  • uncertainty and risk assessment
  • end-of-life decisions
  • conditions and structural health monitoring

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 2745 KiB  
Article
Research on Wind Turbine Fault Detection Based on CNN-LSTM
by Lin Qi, Qianqian Zhang, Yunjie Xie, Jian Zhang and Jinran Ke
Energies 2024, 17(17), 4497; https://doi.org/10.3390/en17174497 - 7 Sep 2024
Viewed by 464
Abstract
With the wide application of wind energy as a clean energy source, to cope with the challenge of increasing maintenance difficulty brought about by the development of large-scale wind power equipment, it is crucial to monitor the operating status of wind turbines in [...] Read more.
With the wide application of wind energy as a clean energy source, to cope with the challenge of increasing maintenance difficulty brought about by the development of large-scale wind power equipment, it is crucial to monitor the operating status of wind turbines in real time and accurately identify the specific location of faults. In this study, a CNN-LSTM-based wind motor fault detection model is constructed for four types of typical faults, namely gearbox faults, electrical faults, yaw faults, and pitch faults of wind motors, combining CNN’s advantages of excelling in feature extraction and LSTM’s advantages of dealing with long-time sequence data, to achieve the simultaneous detection of multiple fault types. The accuracy of the CNN-LSTM-based wind turbine fault detection model reaches 90.06%, and optimal results are achieved for the effective discovery of yaw system faults, pitch system faults, and gearbox faults, obtaining 94.09%, 96.46%, and 97.39%, respectively. The CNN-LSTM wind turbine fault detection model proposed in this study improves the fault detection effect, avoids the further deterioration of faults, provides direction for preventive maintenance, reduces downtime loss due to restorative maintenance, and is essential for the sustainable use of wind turbines and maintenance of wind turbine service life, which helps to improve the operation and maintenance level of wind farms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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16 pages, 9880 KiB  
Article
Experimental Study and Process Simulation on Pyrolysis Characteristics of Decommissioned Wind Turbine Blades
by Dongwang Zhang, Zhong Huang, Xiaobei Shi, Xiaofei Sun, Tuo Zhou, Hairui Yang, Rushan Bie and Man Zhang
Energies 2024, 17(13), 3229; https://doi.org/10.3390/en17133229 - 1 Jul 2024
Viewed by 873
Abstract
The development of wind power has brought about increasing challenges in decommissioning, among which DWTBs (decommissioned wind turbine blades) are the most difficult component to deal with. To enable the cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly large-scale utilization of DWTBs, an experimental study on [...] Read more.
The development of wind power has brought about increasing challenges in decommissioning, among which DWTBs (decommissioned wind turbine blades) are the most difficult component to deal with. To enable the cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly large-scale utilization of DWTBs, an experimental study on thermogravimetric and pyrolysis characteristics of DWTBs was carried out. A new process involving recycling glass fiber with pyrolysis gas re-combustion and flue gas recirculation as the pyrolysis medium was innovatively proposed, and the simulation calculation was carried out. Thermogravimetric experiments indicated that glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRC) was the main heat-generating part in the heat utilization process of blades, and the blade material could basically complete pyrolysis at 600 °C. As the heating rate increased, the formation temperature, peak concentration, and proportion of combustible gas in the pyrolysis gas also increased. The highest peak concentration of CO gas was observed, with CO2 and C3H6 reaching their peaks at 700 °C. The solid product obtained from pyrolysis at 600 °C could be oxidized at 550 °C for 40 min to obtain clean glass fiber. And the pyrolysis temperature increased with the increase in the proportion of recirculation flue gas. When the proportion of recirculation flue gas was 66%, the pyrolysis temperature could reach 600 °C, meeting the necessary pyrolysis temperature for wind turbine blade materials. The above research provided fundamental data support for further exploration on high-value-added recycling of DWTBs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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20 pages, 5333 KiB  
Article
Economic Viability of Implementing Structural Health Monitoring Systems on the Support Structures of Bottom-Fixed Offshore Wind
by Mario Vieira, Brian Snyder, Elsa Henriques, Craig White and Luis Reis
Energies 2023, 16(13), 4885; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16134885 - 22 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1544
Abstract
Offshore wind (OSW) energy is a renewable source with strong prospects of development that may decisively contribute towards energy independence. Offshore wind is, however, not yet ubiquitously cost competitive, and frequently requires support schemes to finance its extensive capital requirements. Therefore, cost reduction [...] Read more.
Offshore wind (OSW) energy is a renewable source with strong prospects of development that may decisively contribute towards energy independence. Offshore wind is, however, not yet ubiquitously cost competitive, and frequently requires support schemes to finance its extensive capital requirements. Therefore, cost reduction strategies are necessary for the future development of offshore wind technologies. Even if structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are currently applied for the inspection of critical mechanical structures, they have not been the focus of research from offshore wind stakeholders. The main goal of this study is to evaluate the viability of SHM systems on the support structures of bottom-fixed offshore wind (BFOSW), alongside the impact of implementing these systems on life-cycle. Economic models are used to estimate the impact of implementing these systems, explained using a case-study of the Kaskasi farm in the German North Sea. General results indicate that installing SHM systems on the support structures of offshore wind can shift the maintenance strategies from preventive to predictive, allowing the intervals between inspections to be increased without a reduction on equipment availability. The greatest benefit is related with the possibility of extending the operational life of the farm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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12 pages, 2563 KiB  
Article
Testing Resilience Aspects of Operation Options for Offshore Wind Farms beyond the End-of-Life
by Corinna Köpke, Jennifer Mielniczek and Alexander Stolz
Energies 2023, 16(12), 4771; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16124771 - 16 Jun 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1125
Abstract
An anticipated challenge for the offshore wind industry is the legally standardized decommissioning of offshore wind infrastructure after the expiration of the respective approval period. To meet the energy and climate targets set by, e.g., the German Federal Government, this challenge must be [...] Read more.
An anticipated challenge for the offshore wind industry is the legally standardized decommissioning of offshore wind infrastructure after the expiration of the respective approval period. To meet the energy and climate targets set by, e.g., the German Federal Government, this challenge must be mastered in the context of sustainability. Potential concepts are (i) the deconstruction of offshore infrastructure without replacement, (ii) the continued operation of the plants, (iii) partially or even completely replacing them with newer, modernized plants (re-powering). Re-powering could also be a combination of existing infrastructures with other innovative technologies, such as hydrogen. In this work, the three concepts are analyzed along with their risks and additional factors, such as feasibility, cost-effectiveness, predictability of technological progress, and, planning security, are discussed. A quantitative risk and resilience analysis is conceptually demonstrated for the specific risk of extreme weather and wave conditions caused by climate change. Synthetic wave height data are generated and the corresponding load changes are applied to example offshore wind farms. The three end-of-life options are compared using resilience indicators that serve as exemplary measures for the energy output, which serves as the key performance indicator. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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18 pages, 6030 KiB  
Article
Operational Wind Turbine Blade Damage Evaluation Based on 10-min SCADA and 1 Hz Data
by Antoine Chrétien, Antoine Tahan, Philippe Cambron and Adaiton Oliveira-Filho
Energies 2023, 16(7), 3156; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16073156 - 31 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1562
Abstract
This work aims to propose a method enabling the evaluation of wind turbine blade damage and fatigue related to a 1 Hz wind speed signal applied to a large period and based on standard 10-min SCADA data. Previous studies emphasize the need for [...] Read more.
This work aims to propose a method enabling the evaluation of wind turbine blade damage and fatigue related to a 1 Hz wind speed signal applied to a large period and based on standard 10-min SCADA data. Previous studies emphasize the need for sampling with a 1 Hz frequency when carrying out blade damage computation. However, such methods cannot be applied to evaluate the damage for a long period of time due to the complexity of computation and data availability. Moreover, 1 Hz SCADA data are not commonly used in the wind farm industry because they require a large data storage capacity. Applying such an approach, which is based on a 1 Hz wind speed signal, to current wind farms is not a trivial pursuit. The present work investigates the possibility of overcoming the preceding issues by estimating the equivalent 1 Hz wind speed damage over a 10-min period characterized by SCADA data in terms of measured mean wind speed and turbulence intensity. Then, a discussion is carried out regarding a method to estimate the uncertainty of the simulation, in a bid to come up with a tool facilitating decision-making by the operator. A statistical analysis of the damage assessed for different wind turbines is thus proposed to determine which one has sustained the most damage. Finally, the probability of reaching a critical damage level over time is then proposed, allowing the operator to optimize the operating and maintenance schedule. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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Review

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42 pages, 4152 KiB  
Review
Factors Influencing the Decision-Making Process at the End-of-Life Cycle of Onshore Wind Farms: A Systematic Review
by João Agra Neto, Mario Orestes Aguirre González, Rajiv Lucas Pereira de Castro, David Cassimiro de Melo, Kezauyn Miranda Aiquoc, Andressa Medeiros Santiso, Rafael Monteiro de Vasconcelos, Lucas Honorato de Souza and Eric Lucas dos Santos Cabral
Energies 2024, 17(4), 848; https://doi.org/10.3390/en17040848 - 11 Feb 2024
Viewed by 1397
Abstract
It is observed that the number of onshore wind farms that reach the end of their service life is continually increasing. The decision-making process that defines the future of the farm is a challenge for the owners. This systematic review aimed to identify [...] Read more.
It is observed that the number of onshore wind farms that reach the end of their service life is continually increasing. The decision-making process that defines the future of the farm is a challenge for the owners. This systematic review aimed to identify which factors influence the decision-making process at the end-of-life cycle of onshore wind farms. In accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, a research strategy was developed and used the Scopus, Web of Science and EMBASE databases. Initially, 2767 articles were identified, but, after double-blind screening, 26 articles were analyzed in full. The scarcity of studies on this topic and little elucidation are limitations of this review. The results include (i) a systematization of six options for decision making, (ii) thirteen factors influencing the decision-making process associated with categories of external factors (logistics and infrastructure aspects, regulatory aspects and public policies, national energy guidelines, the technological development of the sector); and internal factors (economic/financial, operational and environmental aspects). It is concluded that most of the publications consist of simulations and theoretical studies highlighting a bottleneck in experiences and feasible data to support decisions at the end of service life. It is highlighted that most of the studies showed that partial decommissioning with partial repowering, as well as total decommissioning, were the most feasible options for the end-of-life cycle, with aspects related to public policies and regulatory aspects, as well as environmental, operational and economic/financial aspects, being the most influential, especially due to the wake effect, operation and maintenance costs (OPEX) and the protection of guarantees and incentives for operation in a new operating cycle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Energy End-of-Life Options: Theory and Practice)
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