Operational Decision Support

Background
The installation of offshore wind turbines is performed by installation vessels which are sensitive to the environmental conditions. Work is sometimes stopped due to unacceptable motions or loads in the system. The decision to stop or start the work is mostly done based on weather forecasts using fixed weather limits which are not always related to the actual properties of the project. In order to reduce installation risks and costs it will be required to have better insight into the actual weather risk based on the project properties and weather forecast.

Objective
The purpose of this project is to build an Operational Decision Support (ODS) system which can help the vessel management team to take the right weather related decisions for the executed offshore work, the planning and the forecasted weather.
This Operational Decision Support system interactively measures the environment variables such as weather and motions by means of sensors. A combination of dynamic motion models and longer and short term weather forecasts allow the operational limits to be recognized.
The objective of the ODS system is to reduce the actual weather risk of the offshore wind project which will eventually lead to cost reduction for the installation, maintenance and decommissioning of the wind farm.

Short description of activities
A system that measures the environmental variables like weather and motions with sensors and uses a combination of dynamic models, project planning and weather forecasts to visualise the operational risks and loads during the execution of the work.

Results
The result of this project will be a finished and tested ODS system which can be sold to offshore wind vessel operators.
We expect that it is possible to reduce the weather risk of the main installation activities by 50%. This will result in a tangible reduction of the total installation costs for an offshore wind farm of about 5%. This saving will have a direct reduction effect on the CAPEX and OPEX of a wind farm which will reduce the amount of SDE+ subsidy over time.