PhD cum laude for Michiel uit het Broek

Last month, Michiel uit het Broek, defended his thesis “ Condition-based production and maintenance decisions “ and received the distinction ‘cum laude’.
Uit het Broek’s thesis shows that offshore wind farms can produce more efficiently by not always aiming for a high production speed. It is important to take the expected maintenance costs into account when determining the optimum production speed. The application of such a wear-based production policy results in lower maintenance expenditure and has the potential to increase the total energy production of wind farms. By coordinating the wear level of different windmills, for example, fewer sailings are required for maintenance.
For the time being, the costs for wind farms are too high to be competitive with traditional energy sources such as oil and gas. For offshore wind farms, it is mainly the maintenance costs that lead to large expenses. This is partly because it is difficult to bring technicians and parts to the right place at sea. The weather also provides an extra challenge because maintenance is often not possible due to strong winds or high waves. A promising way for cost savings is better planning of maintenance, so that windmills do not stand still unnecessarily due to unexpected failures, and at the same time are not unnecessarily maintained early.
Technological developments make it cheaper and easier to continuously and remotely observe the status of a windmill and to make it run faster or slower. Uit het Broek investigated how the relationship between the speed of rotation of a windmill and the speed at which this windmill wears out can be used to improve the performance of wind farms.
Production facilities can achieve significant cost savings by not always aiming for a high production speed but optimizing it along with maintenance planning. This has several advantages, concludes Uit het Broek.
For example, fewer maintenance actions are needed (which is also more sustainable because fewer boats have to sail), there is less uncertainty about when maintenance costs will be incurred (and it is therefore easier to plan budgets) and the total production can be increased.
Uit het Broek also shows that different wind farms should cooperate by jointly purchasing a maintenance ship. These ships are now often hired when needed, as it is too expensive to purchase a single park boat. Renting, however, gives long and uncertain planning times. This leads to large production losses if a turbine unexpectedly breaks down and high maintenance costs.
Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/(...)df-a11b-ff8b4e690257
Last modified: | 30 January 2023 1.36 p.m. |
More news
-
18 September 2023
Universal basic income proves to be an effective method of development aid
Simply transferring money to people living in poverty works. They then invest it in food, clean drinking water, education and a sustainable house with solar panels. These are the main findings of a study by the University of Groningen that examined...
-
21 July 2023
Robert Lensink co-head of new Africa-Europe research cluster that addresses inequality, poverty and deprivation
Professor Robert Lensink, vice-dean research at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), will lead the new Africa-Europe Cluster of Research Excellence in Inequalities, Poverty and Deprivation (CoRE IPD) together with professor Murray...
-
19 July 2023
EurOMA Early Career Researcher Networking Grant for Aline Seepma and colleagues
Assistant Professor Aline Seepma, together with Nonhlanhla Dube and Isabell Storsjö received the EurOMA Early Career Researcher Networking Grant at the 30th EurOMA Conference in Leuven (Belgium). This grant of € 5000 will facilitate research visits...