An integrated monitoring system for life-cycle management of wind turbines

With an annual growth rate of about 30%, wind energy systems, such as wind turbines, represent one of the fastest growing renewable energy technologies. Continuous structural health monitoring of wind turbines can help improving structural reliability and facilitating optimal decisions with respect to maintenance and operation at minimum associated life-cycle costs. This paper presents an integrated monitoring system that is designed to support structural assessment and life-cycle management of wind turbines. The monitoring system systematically integrates a wide variety of hardware and software modules, including sensors and computer systems for automated data acquisition, data analysis and data archival, a multiagent-based system for self-diagnosis of sensor malfunctions, a model updating and damage detection framework for structural assessment, and a management module for monitoring the structural condition and the operational efficiency of the wind turbine. The monitoring system has been installed on a 500 kW wind turbine located in Germany. Since its initial deployment in 2009, the system automatically collects and processes structural, environmental, and operational wind turbine data. The results demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach not only to ensure continuous safety of the structures, but also to enable cost-efficient maintenance and operation of wind turbines.