Method for computing efficient electrical indicators for offshore wind turbine monitoring

International audienceOffshore wind turbines availability is an important issue if such wind farms are to be considered a reliable source of renewable energy for the future. Environmental conditions and the low accessibility of such wind farms have contributed to the decrease of the availability of the wind turbines, compared to the onshore ones. In order to improve the reliability, condition monitoring systems and the implementation of scheduled maintenance strategies are a must for offshore power plants. This paper proposes a method of computing efficient electrical indicators using the available three-phase electrical quantities. These indicators are then to be used to obtain fault indicators for fault detection and diagnosis. The electrical indicators are obtained by using the instantaneous symmetrical components decomposition, a well proven method in power networks design and diagnosis. The new quantities are able to fully describe the whole electrical system and provide an effective mean to quantify the balance and unbalance in the system. The method uses the electrical three-phase quantities measured at the output of the generator in a wind turbine to obtain the indicators. The performance of this method is illustrated using both synthetic and experimental data

Online condition monitoring of wind turbines through three-phase electrical signature analysis

International audienceIn the context of the KAStrion European project, a complete solution was proposed in order to monitor wind turbines. The developed solution comprises both hardware and software parts of the condition monitoring system. In terms of software, modules for vibration analysis and electrical signal analysis have been developed. The current paper presents the electrical analysis solution proposed in the context of this project. The electrical module is able to detect both mechanical and electrical faults in a wind turbine system. The goal of the mechanical fault detection using electrical signals is to confirm the faults also detected by vibration analysis, while the main focus of the module remains the detection of electrical faults. Results showing the performance of mechanical fault detection are presented using electrical signals acquired on the test-bench developed for testing the KAStrion system. Moreover, results regarding the electrical unbalance are presented using signals acquired on a three-phase transformer. The final solution has been implemented on two onshore wind turbines since the end of 2014, and online condition monitoring results are presented at the end of the paper

Analyse de signaux triphasées pour la surveillance des systèmes électromécaniques : application à la surveillance des turbines éoliennes

This thesis proposes a three-phase electrical signals analysis method for condition monitoring of electromechanical systems. The proposed method relies on the use of instantaneous symmetrical components (ISCs) transform and simple signal processing tools to detect both electrical and mechanical faults in such systems. The advantages of using this three-phase approach for condition monitoring instead of single-phase ones are thoroughly detailed. Firstly, for electrical faults the use of the three-phase transform separates the balanced and unbalanced components thus making electrical unbalance detection easier. Secondly, for mechanical faults the ISCs approach has better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Indeed, by applying the same processing to both single-phase and ISCs, some mechanical faults are only detectable using the positive-sequence ISC. The complete methodology and algorithms to compute fault indicators for both electrical and mechanical faults are given and the results are validated using synthetic and experimental signals. In terms of application, the focus was on condition monitoring of wind turbine components. However, the proposed method can be applied on electromechanical systems in general and can easily be extended to poly-phase systems.Cette thèse propose une méthode d'analyse des signaux triphasés pour la surveillance d'état des systèmes électromécaniques. La méthode proposée repose sur l'utilisation de la transformée en composantes symétriques instantanées et d'outils simples de traitement du signal pour détecter les défauts électriques et mécaniques dans de tels systèmes. Les avantages de cette approche triphasée par rapport à une approche monophasée pour la surveillance d'état sont étudiés en détail. Tout d'abord, pour les défauts électriques, l'utilisation de la transformée triphasée permet de séparer les composantes symétriques et asymétriques, et facilite ainsi la détection d'un déséquilibre électrique. Ensuite, pour les défauts mécaniques, l'approche par transformée en composantes symétriques permet de travailler dans des espaces avec un meilleur rapport signal à bruit. En effet, en appliquant le même traitement à la fois en monophasé et en triphasé sur les composantes symétriques, on observe que certains défauts mécaniques ne sont détectables qu’en utilisant la séquence positive des composantes symétriques. La méthodologie complète et les algorithmes pour calculer les indicateurs de défaut pour les défauts électriques et mécaniques sont donnés et les résultats sont validés sur signaux synthétiques et expérimentaux. En termes d'application, l'accent est mis sur la surveillance d'état des composants de turbines éoliennes. Toutefois, le procédé proposé peut être appliqué à des systèmes électromécaniques en général et peut facilement être étendu à des systèmes polyphasés

Method for computing efficient electrical indicators for offshore wind turbine monitoring

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Bearing faults monitoring in electrical rotating machines through three-phase electrical signals analysis

International audienceCondition monitoring methods based on electrical signals analysis have been used for mechanical and electrical fault detection for a while now. Moreover, the research focus has shifted from single-phase signals analysis to three-phase signals approaches. The main advantages of using three-phase approaches can be stated as separation of balanced and unbalanced electrical quantities as well as better performances in terms of mechanical faults detection. However, such approaches still have a low industrial penetration in part due to their relatively higher complexity compared to single-phase approaches. The current paper proposes an easy to implement method for condition monitoring of bearings, which takes into account the whole three-phase electrical signals. After presenting the theoretical development of the method, the algorithm for computing mechanical faults indicators is given. Moreover, the paper presents experimental results of the proposed approach, using electrical signals acquired on a dedicated test bench

Three-phase electrical signals analysis for mechanical faults monitoring in rotating machine systems

International audienceThe current paper proposes a method to detect mechanical faults in rotating machines using three-phase electrical currents analysis. The proposed fault indicator relies on the use of instantaneous symmetrical components (ISCs), followed by a demodulation step enhancing the small modulations generated in electrical signals by mechanical faults. The limitations due to the multi-component nature of electrical signals, as well as to the noise naturally present in the measured signals are studied and taken into account in order to elaborate a proper and efficient algorithm to compute a mechanical fault indicator. It is theoretically shown that the ISCs based approach results in an increase of the signal-to-noise ratio compared to a single-phase approach, finally leading to an improvement of early fault detection capabilities. This result is validated using both synthetic and experimental signals where the proposed method is used to detect bearing faults and the obtained results are compared to single-phase results