Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring using Generator Control Loop Signals

The speaker presents an advanced monitoring and diagnosis method for the detection of incipient electrical and mechanical faults in a wind-turbine-driven doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG). In this application, the stator windings are directly connected to the grid, whereas a converter controls the rotor currents by means of a field-oriented control (FOC) scheme. A new diagnostic method is proposed, based on frequency analysis of the d-q rotor current error signals inside the machine-side converter controller. Simulation results confirm that the spectra of these signals have features that are suitable for an effective diagnostic procedure. The proposed system could be embedded in a wind turbine at very low cost.