Abstract
Maximizing turbine up-time and reducing maintenance costs are key technology drivers for wind turbine operators. Components within wind turbines are subject to considerable stresses due to unpredictable environmental conditions resulting from rapidly changing local dynamics. In that context, systems health management has the aim to assess the state-of-health of components within a wind turbine, to estimate remaining life, and to aid in autonomous decision-making to minimize damage to the turbine. Advanced contingency control is one way to enable autonomous decision-making by providing the mechanism to enable safe and efficient turbine operation. The work reported herein explores the integration of condition monitoring of wind turbine blades with contingency control to balance the trade-offs between maintaining system health and energy capture. Results are demonstrated using a high fidelity simulator of a utility-scale wind turbine.
Highlights
System health monitoring provides useful information on the current state of a system that can be used to improve many operational objectives of a wind turbine (Doebling et al, 1996)
Decision making using prognostic information on the estimated remaining useful life (RUL) of the component along with operational objectives and constraints may result in enacting changes to the operational mode of the system or to the system’s controller
What is desirable from an operator’s and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) perspective is a turbine controller that is capable of adapting to damage and remaining useful life predictions provided by condition or health monitoring systems
Summary
System health monitoring provides useful information on the current state of a system that can be used to improve many operational objectives of a wind turbine (Doebling et al, 1996). What is desirable from an operator’s and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) perspective is a turbine controller that is capable of adapting to damage and remaining useful life predictions provided by condition or health monitoring systems. An observer is developed that predicts potentially damaging operating conditions Using this information, the contingency controller is able to de-rate the turbine, that is, it reduces the generator operating set-point which results in lower loads on the turbine blades (Frost et al, 2012). The paper is organized as follows: section 2 provides motivation for the problem, section 3 describes the wind turbine simulation, section 4 describes the blade damage model and classifier, section 5 describes the generator derating scheme and its affect on the wind turbine, and section 6 describes the contingency operation and gives simulation results
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