Design and application of condition monitoring system for wind turbines

Condition monitoring system is pivotal for a wind farm to maximize the availability and economic efficiency of its wind turbines. This paper offers state-of-the-art condition monitoring systems to observe the current status of a wind turbine and to send out embryonic alarm signals before its fault. The developed system is mainly made up of four components: a data acquisition system, a signal processing system, a server PC with a user program and a variety of sensors. This system was installed in Yeung-Heung wind farm test bed, Korea last summer. This system is also expected to be applied into offshore wind turbines in the future.