WINDMIL-RTDT ERC Proof of Concept

Abstract

Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs may account for 30% of the total cost of energy for offshore wind power. Alarmingly, only after a few years of installation, wind turbines (WT) - offshore ones in particular - may need emergency repairs. These systems also feature a short lifespan, hindering a fruitful investment in green energy. Motivated by this need, we have designed and implemented a monitoring and diagnostics web-based platform in the context of operation and maintenance of wind turbines, applicable across both onshore and offshore systems. We call this the WINDMIL RTDT framework. Using the algorithms hosted on this platform, owners and operators of wind turbines can quantify the risk of future failure of components and trace back the root-cause of failure. This is business-critical information for energy companies and wind farm owners and operators. The platform consists of a software-hardware solution, implementing various structural health monitoring algorithms, machine learning models and frameworks for detecting faults, errors, damage patterns, anomalies and abnormal operation. Once trained on the linked data, our platform seamlessly facilitates the process of deploying (serving) these algorithms for monitoring on live-streamed data. We believe that this innovation creates evident value and can serve as a decision-support tool for wind turbine manufacturers, wind farm Operators, service companies and insurers. WINDMIL RTDT establishes a technology proof of concept for an easy to deploy and easy to use web-based user-facing application for condition monitoring of wind turbines.