An FMEA-Based Risk Assessment Approach for Wind Turbine Systems: A Comparative Study of Onshore and Offshore

Mahmood Shafiee and Fateme Dinmohammadi
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Mahmood Shafiee: Institute for Energy and Resource Technology, School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL, UK
Fateme Dinmohammadi: Renewable Energy Organization, and SAIPA Heavy Dies Manufacturing Corporation, Tehran 1386114531, Iran

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-24

Abstract: Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) has been extensively used by wind turbine assembly manufacturers for analyzing, evaluating and prioritizing potential/known failure modes. However, several limitations are associated with its practical implementation in wind farms. First, the Risk-Priority-Number (RPN) of a wind turbine system is not informative enough for wind farm managers from the perspective of criticality; second, there are variety of wind turbines with different structures and hence, it is not correct to compare the RPN values of different wind turbines with each other for prioritization purposes; and lastly, some important economical aspects such as power production losses, and the costs of logistics and transportation are not taken into account in the RPN value. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we develop a mathematical tool for risk and failure mode analysis of wind turbine systems (both onshore and offshore) by integrating the aspects of traditional FMEA and some economic considerations. Then, a quantitative comparative study is carried out using the traditional and the proposed FMEA methodologies on two same type of onshore and offshore wind turbine systems. The results show that the both systems face many of the same risks, however there are some main differences worth considering.

Keywords: risk assessment; failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA); onshore wind turbine; offshore wind turbine; risk-priority-number (RPN) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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