Intelligent operation and maintenance in offshore wind–hydrogen systems

TORQUE 2024, first author

Hydrogen systems
How much does prognostics-based operation and maintenance change the cost of an offshore wind farm supplying electrolytic hydrogen?

First author

  • Gulf of Mexico wind area
  • Houston refinery hydrogen demand
  • Monte Carlo maintenance simulation
  • Two-stage optimization
  • 54 sensitivity scenarios

Research question

How much does prognostics-based operation and maintenance change the cost of an offshore wind farm supplying electrolytic hydrogen?

Key insight

A large maintenance saving became a small hydrogen-cost saving

Prognostics-based maintenance lowered wind operation-and-maintenance cost by about 10% and downtime by about 11%. The saving applies to the turbines alone, so its effect on the whole system was smaller: the levelized cost of hydrogen fell by about 2%.

My contribution

First author. I did most of the work: I linked an operation-and-maintenance simulation, developed with my co-authors, to the system techno-economic optimization, ran the analysis and did the writing.

How I approached it

  1. ChallengeMaintenance strategy and system design were optimized in separate models.

    What I didI took the expected maintenance cost and turbine downtime from the maintenance optimization and used them as inputs to the system sizing and dispatch model.

    Why it matteredThis traced the effect of maintenance through to the levelized costs of hydrogen and electricity.

  2. ChallengeAn offshore hydrogen plant needs a realistic site, buyer and price signal.

    What I didI placed the system in a federal Gulf of Mexico wind energy area, estimated Houston-area refinery hydrogen demand from the capacities of ten refineries, and used Houston load-zone prices.

    Why it matteredThis tied the case study to a designated site and an existing demand centre.

Design choices

Apply prognostics-based maintenance only to the wind turbines
Alternatives considered: applying it to the hydrogen equipment as wellCondition monitoring and prognostics are more mature for offshore wind than for hydrogen assets.

Method

Two-stage approach: Monte Carlo operation-and-maintenance simulation, then techno-economic optimization for a Gulf of Mexico site supplying Houston-area refineries.

Key findings

  1. Prognostics-based maintenance lowered wind operation-and-maintenance cost by about 10% and downtime by about 11%.
  2. At the system level, the levelized cost of hydrogen fell by about 2%.

Boundary conditions

Single site and one weather year; maintenance parameters from the collaborators' framework.

What it led to

These plant studies took the site as given; where hydrogen assets should go across a whole grid became the question of my Texas study. Hydrogen's role in expanding renewable energy in Texas

Publications

  1. TORQUE 2024
    Techno-economic analysis incorporating intelligent operation and maintenance management: a case study of an integrated offshore wind and hydrogen energy system
    H. Li, M. Li, J. Carroll, J. Zhang
    Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 2767, article 062016, 2024.
    DOI PDF Code Cited by 2

Citation counts: Google Scholar, October 30, 2026.