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

一种具有成本效益的状态监测（CM）技术对于提高大型风力涡轮机（WTs）的可用性至关重要，无论是陆上还是海上，原因如下：大型WTs的高建设成本增加了提高投资回报的需求；大型WTs容易在极端环境下发生故障，例如雨、沙、光照、龙卷风、冰雪，并且还受到不断变化的负载的影响；由于访问困难，大型WTs故障停机时间长；此外，在大多数大型wt中，组件安装在塔上空间有限的机舱内，高度超过60米，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组件受到致命损坏。然而，到目前为止，还不存在专门为WT设计的合适的CM系统。这是风力发电场的基本需求，因为从小波变换收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。对小波变换信号的不准确分析导致频繁的虚假报警，导致小波变换不必要的关闭，同时，有时没有检测到真正的故障。这种不完美的性能导致风力发电场的可用性严重降低，从而增加了风力发电的成本。Zigoorat有限公司开发了一种新型的小波变换调制技术，该技术具有处理非平稳/非线性信号的优异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和易于安装的机构。

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.