The offshore wind industry in Europe is looking to move further from shore and increase the size of wind parks and wind turbines. As of now marine logistics during the operation and maintenance life cycle phase is, besides wind turbine reliability, the most important limitation for wind turbine service, repair and replacement, and pose a large risk for wind park operators and owners.
Agent-based modeling (ABM) has gained great popularity in recent years, especially in application areas where human behavior is important, because it opens up the possibility of capturing such behavior in great detail. Hybrid models which combine ABM with discrete-event simulation (DES) are particularly appealing in service industry applications.
This paper presents an online simulation framework that can be used to support operational decisions within the context of Through-life Engineering Services. Acting as a closed-loop feedback control mechanism, the simulation model is physically coupled to the assets and will be triggered and automatically executed to assess a set of operational decisions related to maintenance scheduling, resource allocation, spare parts inventory etc. Experimental cases comparing the online simulation against the traditional approach will also be presented. The outcomes have demonstrated the prospects of the framework in enabling more effective/efficient operations of engineering services leading to high assets availability and reduced through-life costs.