Donatella Zappala

Durham University | DU · School of Engineering and Computing Sciences

Effective and timely health monitoring of wind turbine gearboxes and generators is essential to reduce the costs of operations and maintenance activities, especially offshore. This paper presents a scalable and lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN) framework using high‐dimensional raw condition monitoring data for the automatic detection o...

Condition-based maintenance using routinely collected Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) data is a promising strategy to reduce downtime and costs associated with wind farm operations and maintenance. New approaches are continuously being developed to improve the condition monitoring for wind turbines. Development of normal behaviour...

This paper presents a novel prognostic method to estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of generators using the SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems installed in wind turbines. A data-driven wind turbine anomaly classification method is developed. The anomalies are quantified into a health indicator to measure the component de...

Current climate change concerns accelerate interest in developing reliable renewable energy sources. Two of the most significant, in the wind and sea, are subject to turbulence, where its mathematics are at the forefront and the topic of this Conference.

Wind turbine technologies are evolving rapidly in terms of complexity and size and there is an urgent need for cost-effective Operations and Maintenance (O&M) strategies to increase the profitability of wind power assets. Component reliability as well as maintenance strategies have the greatest effect on O&M planning and costs, especially in offsho...

This paper presents a simplified automated fault detection scheme for wind turbine induction generators with rotor electrical asymmetries. Fault indicators developed in previous works have made use of the presence of significant spectral peaks in the upper sidebands of the supply frequency harmonics; however, the specific location of these peaks ma...

In-service turbine monitoring is essential for maximizing the wind energy contribution to the global energy budget. Measurement of turbine shaft torque under transient wind conditions is fundamental to develop reliable condition monitoring techniques. Contact based measurements bring their own disadvantages and non-contactless measurements have man...

The wind industry is showing increasing awareness about the importance of long-term direct shaft mechanical torque measurements to fully understand wind turbine (WT) dynamics, adopt proactive solutions for extreme load mitigation and enhance condition monitoring (CM) capabilities. Although torsional effects are important, torque measurement on such...

Studies demonstrate that the power converter has one of the highest failure rates in a wind turbine, with a key failure driver being the power module junction temperature (T(j)). This paper details an experimental setup for simplified emulation of wind turbine conditions on a power converter with infra-red sensing of IGBT T(j). Results are compared...

In MW-sized wind turbines, the most widely-used generator is the wound rotor induction machine, with a partially-rated voltage source converter connected to the rotor. This generator is a significant cause of wind turbine fault modes. In this paper, a harmonic time-stepped generator model is applied to derive wound rotor induction generator electri...

Non-intrusive, reliable and precise torque measurement is critical to dynamic performance monitoring, control and condition monitoring of rotating mechanical systems. This paper presents a novel, contactless torque measurement system consisting of two shaft-mounted zebra tapes and two optical sensors mounted on stationary rigid supports. Unlike con...

This paper presents a discussion of the development of wind energy generation in the United Kingdom and the challenges faced by the wind industry including reliability, performance and condition monitoring, particularly in the offshore environment. The worldwide installed capacity of offshore wind has now risen to over 7 GW, with an ever increasing...

Improving the availability of wind turbines is critical for minimising the cost of wind energy, especially offshore. The development of reliable and cost-effective gearbox condition monitoring systems (CMSs) is of concern to the wind industry, because the gearbox downtime has a significant effect on the wind turbine availabilities. Timely detection...

Previous wind turbine condition monitoring work identified signals and methods for wind turbine fault detection. This paper concentrates on raising sensitivity so that high reliability is achieved. This is done by adopting techniques of earlier papers but aggregating them in Side Band and Harmonic Power Factor algorithms that can be applied remotel...

Wind turbine condition monitoring is gaining in importance as operators and developers move towards larger, further offshore, less accessible wind farms. However, condition monitoring is made highly challenging by the variable speed, variable load nature of wind turbines. Electrical faults, in the form of brush gear or slip ring damage contribute s...

Tidal stream devices are a new technology for extracting renewable energy from the sea. Various tidal stream device models have been proposed and, if they are installed at chosen high tidal stream velocity sites, they may face extreme climatic, current, and wave load conditions. As they contain complex mechanical, electrical, control, and structura...

As wind power is growing towards a major utility source of electricity, reducing the cost of energy becomes a critical issue in order to make wind power competitive to conventional sources. The current trend in wind turbine (WT) development is for larger, more complex machines located in remote offshore locations which present operation and mainten...

Abstract: Tidal stream devices are a new technology for extracting renewable energy from the sea. Various tidal stream device models have been proposed and, if they are installed at chosen high tidal stream velocity sites, they may face extreme climatic, current, and wave load conditions. As they contain complex mechanical, electrical, control, and...