Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring

Overview
Due to environmental conditions, the remote location of wind farms, and the vertical
height of the nacelle, it is expensive to physically visit wind turbines for maintenance
and repair. In addition, wind turbine components are designed with weight savings in
mind, increasing the likelihood of stress-induced failure. As the demand for wind energy
continues to grow at exponential rates, reducing operation and maintenance (O&M)
costs and increasing reliability is now a top priority. Current O&M costs prohibit faster
adoption of wind energy and ultimately slow global acceptance of wind energy as an
energy supply. With low-cost, online condition monitoring systems that predict failures
and maintenance requirements, it is possible to forecast maintenance activities and
lower O&M costs.

To learn more about NI condition monitoring systems, visit:

NI Machine Condition Monitoring

Table of Contents
1. Need for Condition Monitoring
2. National Instruments Condition Monitoring Solutions
3. Control System Integration and Communication Protocol Support
4. NI Products for Condition Monitoring
5. Case Studies
6. Application Areas

Need for Condition Monitoring

The current wind energy trend is the use of larger wind turbines in remote locations,
which are increasingly offshore, for optimal wind conditions. Both the size and location
factors have led to maintenance challenges that are unique compared to traditional
power generation systems:

1. No walkaround maintenance Unlike other power generation equipment,

walkaround maintenance checks are not feasible due to the difficulty and
expense of physically reaching the wind turbine.
2. High maintenance costs Maintenance costs are high due to the cost of
traveling to remote locations and the need for an expensive crane large enough
to lift needed parts to the nacelle.
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 3. Higher propensity for failure Gearboxes and related mechanical components
are designed with weight savings in mind, leaning toward a higher probability of
stress-induced failure.

In addition, constantly changing loads and highly variable operating conditions create
high mechanical stress on wind turbines. This high degree of stress demands a high
degree of maintenance.

The wind energy industry typically uses a reactive maintenance approach or run-to-
failure maintenance. This form of maintenance has been shown to be the most costly
Operations and Maintenance (O&M) practice available to operators.

All of these factors lead to an increased O&M cost that ultimately affects the Cost of
Energy (COE) metric used for evaluating the project feasibility and return on investment.
For more information about the COE metric, read the following report from Sandia
National Laboratories:

Wind Turbine Reliability: Understanding and Minimizing Wind Turbine Operation and
Maintenance Costs

More simply, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has detailed case studies in
the electric power industry and has shown that reactive maintenance (running the
machine until it fails) is the least effective and the most costly approach to power
generation equipment maintenance. EPRI's comparative maintenance costs are listed
below:

1. Reactive maintenance (run to failure) costs $17.00 USD per horsepower per
year (This is the baseline.)
2. Preventive maintenance (scheduled maintenance according to the
manufacturer's recommendations) costs $24.00 USD per horsepower per year
(a savings of 24 percent compared to reactive maintenance)
3. Predictive maintenance (using condition monitoring to predict maintenance
needs) costs $9.00 USD per horsepower per year (a savings of 47 percent
compared to reactive maintenance)

If turbine components are allowed to run to failure, the overall energy production is
significantly decreased due to unscheduled downtime. At the same time, the cost of
rushed parts and crane operations, as well as collateral damage caused by the failing
component leading to additional damage, further increases maintenance costs.
Reactive maintenance costs are then significant cost increases far above the cost of
predictive maintenance using an online condition monitoring system. The condition
monitoring systems function is to continuously monitor components and predict
mechanical problems, enabling operators to schedule maintenance and avoid
catastrophic failures.

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To learn more about wind turbine maintenance and condition monitoring from the World
Wind Energy Association, read the following report:

Wind Turbine Maintenance and Condition Monitoring Report

National Instruments Condition Monitoring Solutions

National Instruments provides a unique solution to the condition monitoring market. As a
technology provider, it is an NI focus to provide generator/gearbox manufacturers or
wind turbine integrators the hardware and software to design a high-performance, low-
cost, unique solution for monitoring wind turbines and wind turbine components. NI
focuses on providing the newest, industry-proven signal processing algorithms for
extracting the key features of a signal to predict machine component health. These
algorithms include order analysis, cepstral analysis, bearing modulation detection,
wavelets, AR modeling, power quality, power factor, rainfall stress cycle analysis, and
many other statistical analysis algorithms. With NI LabVIEW software, you can use
these built-in signal processing algorithms, import text codes (such as C and other math
scripts), and easily design unique and evolutionary algorithms.

For example, studies show that gearbox and gearbox bearings are among the most
common failure points of wind turbines. Gearbox and bearing vibration analysis using
accelerometers is an accepted tool to monitor and predict bearing and gearbox failures.
However, the multitude of vibration sources in a multistage wind turbine gearbox results
in a complex array of gear mesh, modulation, and running speed vibrations.

Correct analysis of gearbox vibrations requires a high-resolution spectrum analyzer.

Fundamentally, this involves a wide-bandwidth vibration signal sampling instrument
capable of recording a long duration time waveform record. In other words, the condition
monitoring solution must have sample rates of 51.2 kHz or better and have the ability to
store records exceeding 2 MB of binary time waveform records. The
NI CompactRIO platform offers these capabilities. Further, advanced spectral analysis
including zoom FFT and zoom order spectrum further clarify high-frequency vibration
characteristics without losing sideband data. Sideband analysis helps the vibration
analyst determine which meshing gears are at fault.

This open, flexible NI LabVIEW and CompactRIO environment has led to the following
benefits:

1. Lower cost NI focuses on low-cost, powerful technologies for the advantage

and consumption of service suppliers, wind turbine integrators, and OEMs.
2. Custom solutions NI provides developers the ability to easily design unique
monitoring solutions, surpassing the abilities of traditional condition monitoring
solutions.
3. OEM focused NI works with more than 900 developer partners to provide
custom, ready-to-run solutions at significantly reduced costs.

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 4. Integration of control and monitoring the NI platform has the ability to integrate
control and monitoring on one platform for advanced model-based control and
monitoring feedback.

To learn more about condition monitoring signal processing algorithms, visit:

Essential Wind Energy Technologies and Signal Processing Fundamentals

Control System Integration and Communication Protocol

Support
One of the big differences with a system based on NI technologies as compared to
other products besides lower cost and unique signal processing is the integration
capabilities of the control system. With the NI platform, it is possible to integrate control
and monitoring on a single device or by communication between devices. The NI
platforms are capable of communicating with onboard Ethernet, RS232 and RS485,
Modbus, OPC, CAN, Fieldbus, PROFIBUS, or even proprietary communications
protocols. This flexibility in communication enables the NI system to easily integrate with
other devices in the wind turbine nacelle.

For more information on control system design, visit:

Wind Turbine Control System Design and Deployment

NI Products for Condition Monitoring

National Instruments offers a wide range of signal conditioning equipment to interface
with different sensors such as vibration, strain, acoustics, temperature, voltage current
and electrical power, and so on. Using standard communications protocols, oil
particulate counts and fiber-optic sensing can add to the condition monitoring device. It
is this mixed-measurement capability that makes National Instruments a leader in
condition monitoring.

For more information on the recommended NI modules for condition monitoring, read:

National Instruments Products for Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring

Distributed Condition Monitoring Example for Wind Turbines

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Case Studies
The NI LabVIEW, CompactRIO, USB, and PXI platforms are widely used in design
verification, factory testing, field diagnostics, and the online monitoring of wind turbines
and wind turbine components. Review these case studies to learn more.

1. Reducing Test Time and Increasing Quality in Final Control System Tests for
Wind Turbines Using NI TestStand and LabVIEW with NI PXI instruments for
signal conditioning to develop a standard automated test system.
2. Developing a Wind Turbine Assembly Dynamic Diagnostics System for
ACCIONA Wind Power Using LabVIEW Developing a system in accordance
with ACCIONA quality standards for the dynamic characterization of wind
turbines during the post-assembly-testing stage that is powerful, reliable, and
flexible in terms of installation and use as well as within budget.
3. Siemens Wind Power Develops a Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator for Wind
Turbine Control System Software Testing Creating a new real-time test system
for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of the embedded control software releases
of Siemens wind turbine control systems using NI TestStand, the LabVIEW Real-
Time and LabVIEW FPGA modules, and the NI PXI platform.
4. Testing Wind Turbines for Noise Emissions with NI LabVIEW Developing a
custom measurement system that uses the NI PXI dynamic signal acquisition
module to measure acoustic data from microphones and offers advanced
measurement and analysis using Wind Turbine and noiseLAB software.
5. Wind Turbine Main Gearbox Test Stand by GE Wind Energy Using NI products
to develop a wind turbine gearbox test stand for vibration testing.
6. Electric Generator Automated Quality Control Test System by GES Siemsa
Using NI products to develop an automated quality control system with
configurable sensor inputs.
7. Data Acquisition System Laboratory Testing of Wind Turbines CENER by
GES Siemsa Using NI products to develop a mixed-measurement generator
monitoring solution.
8. Integrating CompactRIO Meteologgers in a Wind SCADA Programming and
integrating an application using CompactRIO hardware and LabVIEW software to
acquire, transmit, and store high-frequency signals.
9. Developing an Online Wind Farm Condition Monitoring System with Centralized
Data Collection Developing a diagnostic network to automatically track the
status of wind turbines with centralized access so that users can take advantage
of the captured signals for offline analysis.
10. Rugged Monitoring System for Bearing by FAG Procheck, Bearing
Manufacturer Using CompactRIO to develop an online machine condition
monitoring solution.
11. LabVIEW and CompactRIO Keep Power Plants Online Using VESKIs
Computerized Diagnostic System (CoDiS) monitoring software with LabVIEW
and CompactRIO to provide a continuous, local area network (LAN)-compatible
vibration monitoring system.

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 12. DIAGEN, remote diagnostic system for large electric power generators
Creating a real-time monitoring system based on the CompactRIO platform to
safely perform real-time data acquisition and postprocessing of the same
effectively.
13. Vibration Monitoring of a 600 MW Steam Turbine Start-Up Using LabVIEW
Using multiple NI PCI-4472 dynamic signal acquisition boards mounted on a
single chassis along with LabVIEW software adapted directly from LabVIEW
Order Analysis Toolkit examples to generate a variety of analysis plots on
demand and troubleshoot the turbine vibration.

Application Areas
Find more information on NI condition monitoring offerings in their individual application
areas:

1. Power quality monitoring

2. Machine condition monitoring
3. Structural health monitoring

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