Development of Condition Monitoring and Control System for Wind Turbines

A wind farm consisting of wind turbines made by different manufacturers has problems in its operation and maintenance: first, its operators are required to learn how to operate different Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems supplied by the manufacturers, and secondly, in the event of alarm activation, an emergency situation may not be recognized due to different user interface screens. To solve these operational difficulties and to maximize the availability and reliability of such a wind farm, a novel condition monitoring system integrated with control functions has been developed. This system is directly connected with SCADA systems and provides control, signal monitoring and alarm reporting functions for different kinds of wind turbines as well as conventional condition monitoring based on vibration measurement. This paper presents the developed condition monitoring and control system and its successful application to the YeongHeung wind farm.