proof of market potentials and economics of a state of the art condition monitoring technology for wind turbine applications

成本效益高的状态监测(CM)技术对于提高大型风电机组(无论是陆上还是海上)的可用性至关重要，原因如下：大型风电机组的建设成本高，增加了提高投资回报的必要性；大型风电机组容易受到极端环境(如雨、沙、闪电、龙卷风、冰雪)的故障，而且还受到不断变化的负载的影响；大型风电机组因访问困难而出现故障，停机时间长；此外，在大多数大型WTS中，部件安装在塔架上高度超过60米的空间有限的吊舱中，这使得更换变得困难。使用可靠的CM系统将加强维护，并防止关键的WT部件受到致命损坏。然而，到目前为止，还没有专门为WT设计的合适的CM系统。这是风电场的基本需求，因为从风电机组采集的监测信号在时间和频率上都是非平稳和非线性的，而传统的CM系统在处理非线性和非平稳信号方面是臭名昭著的。对WT信号的不准确分析导致频繁的杂散警报，这会导致WTS不必要的关闭，同时有时无法检测到真实故障。这种不完美的性能导致风电场利用率的严重降低，从而增加了风电成本。Zigoorat有限公司开发了一种新的WT CM技术，该技术具有出色的非平稳/非线性信号处理能力和高效的计算算法。此外，与市场上现有的产品相比，它具有更高的故障检测精度以及易于安装的机制。

A cost-effective Condition Monitoring (CM) technique is essential to raise the availability oflarge Wind Turbines (WTs), whether onshore or offshore for the following reasons: The highconstruction cost of large WTs increasing the need to improve payback; Large WTs are proneto failure from extreme environments, such as rain, sand, lighting, tornado, snow and ice, andalso subject to constantly variable load; large WTs breaking down have long downtimes dueto access difficulties; and furthermore, in most large WTs, subassemblies are installed in thespace- limited nacelle on the tower at a height over 60 (m) making replacement difficult.The use of a reliable CM system will enhance the maintenance and prevent critical WTsubassemblies from being fatally damaged. However, to date, an appropriate CM system,specifically designed for WT, is not existed. This is an essential need for wind farms becausethe monitoring signals collected from a WT are non-stationary and nonlinear, both in time andfrequency, while the conventional CM Systems are notorious in dealing with nonlinear andnon-stationary signals. The inaccurate analysis of WT signals results in frequent spuriousalarms, which cause unnecessary shut down of the WTs, whilst, sometimes not detecting realfaults. This imperfect performance leads to serious reduction in wind farms availability andhence increases the cost of wind power.A novel WT CM technology has been developed by Zigoorat Ltd, which is distinguished byboth its excellent capability in processing non-stationary/nonlinear signals and its efficientcomputational algorithm. In addition, it has substantially greater fault detection precision aswell as easy installation mechanism compare to existing products in the market.