Making Use of 1-Second Data: Advances in Detection of Foundation and Aerodynamic Inefficiencies
(Room Fast Track)
23 May 19
10:45 AM
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11:10 AM
Tracks:
Performance and Reliability
Owners and Operators (OOs) seek ways to improve the performance of their wind turbines, reduce downtime and service and maintenance cost, increase operational efficiency, extend the life of their assets and, overall, reduce the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE). While the turbines' SCADA systems already collect 1-second data, traditional desktop-based studies have generally been too expensive to be a viable investment for OOs. It is only recently, with the advent of affordable online digital analysis platforms, that operational data started to be routinely mined to identify any performance issues or trends that could be indicative of potential failures. These types of services normally focus on 10-minute SCADA data, however many modern turbine models also provide good quality data at 1Hz through their OPC and IEC interfaces. The analysis of this type of "higher-frequency" data is now being exploited. We have developed a structural integrity monitor, which makes use of 1Hz data to identify and track some of the main structural frequencies of a turbine and to highlight any significant changes over time or across turbines, which may be indicative of existing issues or incipient failure modes. In this presentation we will provide details of the algorithm and we will present the results of two case studies, one focusing on monitoring of foundation integrity, the second focusing on the detection of blade pitch misalignment.