Maintenance of an offshore wind farm making use of an assembly of a floating harbour ship and a plurality of shuttle vessels

Abstract

A method for use with maintenance of an offshore wind farm includes a plurality of offshore wind turbines installed in open sea, where the method uses an assembly of a plurality of shuttle vessels 8, 9 and a seaworthy harbour ship 1 which includes an internal harbour basin 4 within outlines of the ship 1 and a plurality of mooring positions 7 for mooring the plurality of shuttle vessels 8, 9 to the ship 1 when lying inside the basin 4, where the method further includes comprises sailing the assembly of the plurality of shuttle vessels 8, 9 and the harbour ship 1 towards an anchoring position near or in the wind farm and anchoring the harbour ship 1 there, and sailing the plurality of shuttle vessels 8, 9 back and forth between the mooring positions 7 of the anchored harbour ship 1 and distinctive ones of the wind turbines for performing the maintenance thereto.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is the National Stage of International Application No. PCT / NL2011 / 050052, filed Jan. 27, 2011, which claims the benefit of Netherlands Application No. 2004166, filed Jan. 28, 2010, the contents of which is incorporated by reference herein.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The invention relates to a method for use with the performance of maintenance to an offshore wind farm. The invention also relates to a harbour facility, in particular for use with such a method of performing maintenance to an offshore wind farm, and to an assembly of such a harbour facility and a plurality of shuttle vessels for transfer of service engineers from the harbour facility towards wind turbines of the farm and vice versa.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]An offshore wind farm usually comprises a cluster of some hundreds wind turbines. The large number is necessary to be able to efficiently transfer the generated electricity from the farm to the shor...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009]The present invention aims to overcome at least some of the above-mentioned disadvantages or to provide a usable alternative. In particular the invention aims to provide a safe, efficient and reliable method for use with maintenance of offshore wind farms, more in particular for offshore wind farms lying relative far out of the coast.

Problems solved by technology

It has appeared that a rather intense maintenance of the offshore wind turbines is necessary.

Otherwise one or more of the turbines are likely to get broke, which results in the wind farm no longer being able to yield a profitable return on investment.

Such large distances are disadvantageous for the presently known maintenance methods that are presently used with wind farms lying much closer to the shore.

Also the risk of bad weather has a negative impact.

Thus the more frequent it is going to occur that sailing out with the shuttle vessels towards the wind farm is deemed to be too risky and that maintenance is not possible during that period.

This has an immediate negative effect on the total efficiency of the wind farm.

This however is rather hazardous and also very expensive for large scaled wind farms lying relative far off of the coast.

At this moment no methods are known for performing maintenance of large scaled wind farms lying relative far off of the coast in a cost effective manner.

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