Windmill service logistics

Project leader(s):

Prof.dr. Ruud H. Teunter (Professor of Decision Theory), Dr. Jasper Veldman (Senior Lecturer)

Consortium:

Provincie Groningen, DHL, Groningen Seaports, Siemens, Van Oord, Wijnne Barends, Eekels Technology, ECN, Oliveira, EYEWIND, Energy Valley, Dutch Institute World Class Maintenance

Funding from:

85% NWO, 15% participating companies

Time period:

1 march 2015 till 8 february 2021

Project website:

Sustainable service logistics for offshore wind farms

Summary:

Offshore wind farms are expected to deliver 14% of total EU electricity demand by 2030, saving 315 Mt of CO2 emissions annually. With projected cumulative investments at €211.1 billion and expected employment at 50,000 FTE by 2030, this sector?s future looks bright. However, a 40% decrease in costs is widely considered to be prerequisite to make this happen. Considering that about 50% of the costs incurred during the operational phase are related to logistics, this projec aimed at developing new innovative methods for the sustainable design and operation of service logistics for offshore wind farms. This project is composed of several work packages that covered network design, condition-based maintenance strategies, cross-chain control of goods flows, as well as collaboration and governance aspects. In each work package, new methods were developed that can serve as enablers for an improved service logistics process. These methods generally contributed to the field of Operations Research, proposing novel combinatorial and stochastic optimization and improvement approaches. Extensive simulation studies and scenario analyses will be performed to test the robustness and resilience of the integrated network for offshore wind farms. The consortium includes 12 public and private partners.