Condition monitoring & fault diagnosis system for Offshore Wind Turbines

Due to the technological development, the electronic power progress and economic stake, through the use of Wound Rotor Induction Motor (WRIM) has taken more and more places in different domains (transport, energy production, electric drive..,) thanks to their robustness, efficiency and lower costs. Despite the performed work researches and the improvement that has been brought, these machines still remain the potential seats of failures both in stator and rotor levels. Consequently, WRIM faults detection is currently one of the centers of interest of several researches of both academic and industrial laboratories. In fact, this article addresses this problem by the use of Principal Components Analysis (PCA) for faults detection in Offshore Wind Turbine Generator (OWTG). An accurate analytic modeling of healthy and faulted OWTG is suggested to perform the data matrix needed for PCA method. Tests were achieved using a numeric simulator on Matlab/Simulink software. Analysis of OWTG simulation proves the efficiency of PCA method. Several simulation results will be presented and discussed.