Optimizing maintenance cost of wind farms by scheduling preventive maintenance and replacement of critical components using mathematical approach

The maintenance at optimum interval of wind farm is a major factor in the progress of wind energy project. The optimized interval of preventive maintenance leads to the optimized maintenance cost. The maintenance cost contributes about 30% of the total cost of wind farm. This research consists of developing a mathematical model to optimize the maintenance cost of critical components of wind turbine. In this research the schedule of the preventive maintenance is being calculated by taking the failure rate distribution as weibull distribution. The variation in the shape and scale parameter of the weibull distribution leads to different optimal interval of preventive maintenance of the critical components. The equation developed would give the optimized maintenance cost of different components of wind turbine. The maintenance cost before optimized intervals and after optimized would be compared. The probability density function, failure rate function and reliability of components are being used as parameters in this research.