Effect of power converter on condition monitoring and fault detection for wind turbine

This paper investigates the impact of power electronics converter when attempting wind turbine condition monitoring system and fault diagnosis by the analysis of fault signatures in the electrical output of the turbine. A wind turbine model has been implemented in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. Fault signature analysis for electrical signals is presented. A signal processing algorithm based on a fast fourier transform is then used to potentially identify fault signatures. The results obtained with this model are validated with experimental data measured from a physical test rig. Through comparison between simulation data and experimental data it is concluded that the power converter has significantly reduced fault signatures from the electrical signal though not entirely extinguished them. It may still be possible to extract some fault information after the converter though this is much more challenging than upstream. Further work is needed to see whether it may be possible to modify the power converter particularly the filter design and the switching elements to avoid removing fault signatures from electrical signals without adding significant cost or compromising performance.