Resource and Information Sharing for the Installation Process of the Offshore Wind Energy

The costs of the installation phase of the production system offshore wind energy plant have a considerable influence on the electricity production costs. For this reason, there are efforts undertaken to reduce the installation costs. The resources (e.g. installation vessels) and information (e.g. weather forecasts) play a vital role in the logistics installation network. This paper investigates the potential of a shared use of resources and the sharing of different information in the installation phase of the offshore wind energy by means of an event discrete, agent-based simulation. This is motivated by the large number of wind parks still to be installed in the future. To this end, simultaneously installed wind farm projects are examined and the effects of exchange of different information are investigated. The impact of weather restrictions on the processes of loading, transport and installation is taken into consideration. By means of the resource and information sharing approaches, significant savings potential was identified for the offshore wind energy installation.