Reference Architecture for Remote Operations of Offshore Wind Farms

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various types of equipment or marine operations. An established model for a similar domain is theoperational model from the Norwegian oil and gas industry used, known as Integrated Operations(IO)(OLF, 2008). We will use this model as a starting point.Our goal in this paper is to propose a reference architecture for data integration to optimize remoteoperations of offshore wind farms. The purpose of a reference architecture is to provide guidance for thedevelopment of architectures for remote operations of offshore wind farms. In order to formulate acorrect reference architecture we have defined the following requirements. The architecture must: support all partners in their communication via user interfaces such that users can easily accessthe information;support many-to-many relationship and facilitate information exchange;provide baseline requirements for accessibility, confidentiality and integrity; improve and support integration of enterprise and control systems.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 identifies stakeholders and their role in our ITsystem,section 3 expresses our proposed reference architecture. Finally, section 4 concludes the paperand gives comments on future work.2. STAKEHOLDERS IN OFFSHORE WIND OPERATIONS2.1 Identification of StakeholdersStakeholders are actors that can influence or be affected by a certain problem or action. Their concernsreflect the essentials of the problem domain. Therefore, identification of stakeholders is a significant stepin building a reference architecture. It improves collaboration between stakeholders and facilitates theprocess of deployment and maintenance of the IT-system. Furthermore, careful analysis of stakeholders isusually necessary to find desirable problem definitions that can motivate actions by a coalition ofstakeholders large enough to secure adoption of preferred solutions and to protect them duringimplementation (Rochefort and Cobb, 1994; Schon and Rein, 1994; Jacobs and Shapiro, 2000; Bryson,2003). Since our work starts with IO, first of all we need to have an overview of differences betweenoffshore wind and offshore oil and gas industries. TABLE 1 shows this point.TABLE 1. Comparison of some dimensioning factors for IT architecture for offshore oil and gas and windIssue Offshore oil and gas Offshore windManning Normally manned Normally unmannedControl and data acquisitionsystemsDaily operation andintegrated operationsOne of each type (ESD, F&G, PSD,PCS, ballast, etc.)Decisions taken offshore withsupport from onshoreOne of each type for eachturbine.Decision taken onshore.Personnel will be sent tooffshore to perform specifictasks.Production Produce and store Produce directly to marketRevenue margins High Low and sensitive to productionoptimizationPhysical access Low sensitivity to weatherconditionsHigh sensitivity to weatherconditionsControl parameters Many FewA big difference between offshore oil and gas and offshore wind energy is that there are personnelonboard oil platforms while in wind farms human availability is not normally necessary, the system canPage 1052
operate automatically and can be controlled by the operations center. Another difference is the number ofwind turbines; it can be hundreds in a wind farm (an asset), whereas a single oil platform is oftenregarded as an asset. Despite the fact that there are some differences between oil and gas industry andoffshore wind energy industry, there are still some common characteristics, such as in both industries,optical fiber or other broadband technology are needed to transfer data (real-time data) from offshore toonshore center. As a result of the comparison we can group stakeholders of offshore wind energy bycategories that are depicted in the TABLE 2.TABLE 2. Stakeholders in offshore wind industryStakeholderEngineering companiesMaintenance and vessel operatorsRoleProvide construction drawings and other documentationPerform maintenance tasks and marine operations related totheseOwner/Operator Perform overall wind farm control, production planningmaintenance decisions, technical and operational analysis,coordination and support of maintenance activities.Equipment vendors and expertsWeather forecastersAuthoritiesPower grid onshore/marketLicense partnersSupport equi detailed condition monitoring and analysis of specific equipment.Storm tracks, short- and long-term predictions of wind and otherweather conditions, like wave height, forecast on climate changeCollaboration with owner/operators. Supervision and control oflicense obligations, environmental impact etc.Impact on amount of production energyCooperation in larger investment and strategic decisions2.2 Offshore Wind Daily OperationsIn each wind farm, there has to be communication between wind turbines, between wind turbines andmaintenance personnel and between wind farms with the purpose of production optimization. Forexample, according to the wind direction and speed, every turbine can have a different configuration, sothat the wind can generate energy most cost effectively. Whereas communication between wind farms andoperations center probably will be transferred by using optical fibers, communication between windturbines or wind farms can be exchanged by broadband wireless communication.Obviously, there are many participants in an offshore wind project and many of them will probably havetheir own application and own data format. Therefore, we need to construct common data exchangeformats which are used in collaborations between offshore wind partners. This operation ensures that anychange from subsystem or application from other partners will not affect our system. Moreover, thecenter can handle operations, such as data analysis, data visualization, and collection of information fromweather forecaster. Based on this information, the center can control the velocity of wind turbines as wellas optimize the wind parks in order to maximize the yield over its lifetime. If there is a case where humanparticipation is needed, the center will send a request to experts and get advices, suggestions or decisionsfrom them, and then operators or decision-makers at the center will give final decision to on-boardmaintenance services in order to have correct and timely operations. Besides, information from theoperations center is necessary for the energy market (grid/consumers), and vice-versa. Basic dailyoperations of offshore wind industry are illustrated in FIGURE 1.Page 1053
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Reference Architecture for Remote Operations of Offshore Wind Farms

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