5. Maintenance

5.1 General

The economic viability of projects depends on the availability of wind turbines. At sea, any breakdown or defect means a relatively long period of downtime, as repairs cannot always be carried out quickly. The wind turbines need to be accessible, and this is sometimes impossible for meteorological reasons. If a handling facility is required to replace a piece of equipment, this naval facility may not be available on site at short notice. And when it is, it's not certain that sea conditions will allow the intervention to take place as soon as it arrives.

This means that maintenance needs to be considered very carefully, well in advance of the project.

Efforts in this area have resulted in availability rates for offshore wind...