Offshore wind power system reliability evaluation considering wind resource constraints and double weather patterns

Comparing with onshore wind farms, offshore wind farms require even higher reliability due to adverse operating conditions and difficulties of maintenance. Just for the same reason, if typical reliability evaluation method is directly applied, in which only electrical component random failure is modeled without any parameter modification to reflect effect of wind resource and weather condition, the result can't correctly indicate reliability level of offshore wind farms. This paper proposed a wind turbine reliability model under double weather patterns considering wind resource constraints. Adopting minimal path set/cut set method based on adjacency-terminal matrix, the paper accomplished reliability analysis of offshore wind power system covering full chains of wind turbines, collection system, offshore substation, transmission system and onshore substation. Case study was carried out and results demonstrates that the effect of wind resources constraints on reliability of offshore wind farm electrical system is greater than impact of component random failure during operation, and it's a better way to characterize the reliability model of offshore wind power system with two different parameters in normal and adverse weather conditions. © 2015, Power System Technology Press. All right reserved.