Operational-condition-independent criteria dedicated to monitoring wind turbine generators

Condition monitoring is beneficial to the wind industry for both land-based and offshore plants. However, because of the variations in operational conditions, its potential has not been fully explored. There is a need to develop an operational-condition-independent condition monitoring technique, which has motivated the research presented here. In this paper, three operational-condition-independent criteria are developed. The criteria accomplish the condition monitoring by analyzing the wind turbine electrical signals in the time domain. Therefore, they are simple to calculate and ideal for online use. All proposed criteria were tested through both simulated and practical experiments, showing that these criteria not only provide a solution for detecting both mechanical and electrical faults that occur in wind turbine generators, but that they provide a potential tool for diagnosing generator winding faults.