Offshore Wind Access Report 2020

Offshore wind farms worldwide are moving further away from shore in order to capture more favourable wind conditions. However, this creates additional challenges regarding their Operations & Maintenance (O&M). O&M costs contribute significantly (20-30%) to the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) over the lifetime of an offshore wind farm. One of the...

Offshore Wind Access Report 2019

Offshore wind farms in Europe are moving further from shore in order to capture more favourable wind conditions. However, this creates additional challenges regarding their Operations & Maintenance (O&M). O&M costs contribute significantly (20-30%) to the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) over the lifetime of an offshore wind farm. One of the main...

Operations & Maintenance Simulation for Tidal Energy Converters

he Netherlands is establishing its own test and development centre for marine energy: the Dutch Marine Energy Centre (DMEC), in order to facilitate essential real sea experience. However, realistic simulations in software is also important: helping avoid expensive failures, plan costs and choose vessels and equipment for offshore renewable...

Including Realistic Vessel and Human Behaviour in Simulations of Offshore Wind Farm Operations

During the Offshore Maintenance Joint Industry Project (OM JIP), the offshore wind farm simulation tool ECN O&M Access has been upgraded from version 1.0 to 2.0, enhancing the modelling of wind farm accessibility by incorporating vessel hydrodynamics and motion-induced human fatigue. Case studies are performed using the new version of ECN O&M...

Removing the effect of striations in n-type silicon solar cells

Several industrial n-type Czochralski silicon ingots were analysed on wafer and cell levels with ECN's bifacial n-type solar cell process. In some of the ingots, the solar cell performance in the very top drop of about 1% absolute with respect to cell from the middle part of the ingot. These cells show typical ring shaped pattern. After...

Simulating liquid loading in gas wells

This paper describes work performed by the authors over the last several years to better understand the factors affecting the onset of liquid loading. To further improve the prediction of onset of liquid loading, efforts were undertaken to better model the process. Dedicated codes as well as a commercial multiphase flow simulator were used to...

Gas-well liquid-loading-field-data analysis and multiphase-flow modeling

Gas-well liquid loading occurs when gas production becomes insufficient to lift the associated liquids to surface. When that happens, gas production becomes intermittent and eventually stops. In depleting gas reservoirs, the technical abandonment pressure and ultimate recovery are typically governed by liquid loading. To date, most methods for...

Transient multiphase flow modeling of gas well liquid loading

Gas well liquid loading occurs when gas production becomes insufficient to lift the associated liquids to surface. When that happens gas production first turns intermittent and eventually stops. Hence in depleting gas reservoirs the technical abandonment pressure and ultimate recovery are typically governed by liquid loading. To date, most...