Scottish Branch events 2015

18th February 2015, 5:30pm

Epistemic Uncertainties for Availability Risk in Future Offshore Wind Farms, a talk by Professor Tim Bedford (University of Strathclyde)

Abstract

(Tim Bedford, Athena Zitrou, Lesley Walls, Keith Bell, Kevin Wilson)
To increase capacity and reduce costs, new offshore wind farms use novel large-scale and complex technology which introduces potential systemic weaknesses in design, manufacturing and operational processes. As offshore wind farms accumulate experience such weaknesses should be resolved, but most likely at the cost of additional investment. The inability of availability models to represent the epistemic uncertainty about systemic weaknesses can lead to underestimation of future performance. From the perspective of assessing financial performance in order to make the investment case, understanding the sources of these uncertainties is critical, as they will typically impact on early life, which is the time at which loss of generation capacity has the largest negative effect on the project projected NPV.

As part of an EPSRC funded project, we have developed a generic simulation model for new offshore wind farms. This model aims to support decisions by understanding the impact of risks arising from design, manufacturing, installation and operation. The model outputs various parameters that indicate the impact of aleatory and epistemic uncertainties on the productivity of the farm.

We describe the model and the work we have done with engineering and industry experts to validate its structure, discuss the types of features that the model can deal with, and consider the potential applications.

Venue: Room LT908, Livingstone Tower, University of Strathclyde

No charge is made to attend meetings and non-members are welcome.