INTEGRATING OIL HEALTH AND VIBRATION DIAGNOSTICS FOR RELIABLE WIND TURBINE HEALTH PREDICTIONS

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) goal for wind energy is that it comprise 20 % of the nation’s energy by 2030. For this to be achieved, so called “distributed wind ” and off-shore wind farms will be required. However, to date, operating & maintenance and unscheduled outage costs make such applications risky [1]. A potential risk mitigation strategy is implementation of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM). Prognostics promise great benefits to parts order/handling, logistic planning, maintenance scheduling, which ultimately reduces the cost of ownership/operation. Successful prognostics require that faults be detected at the earliest possible stage. However, to fully realize the benefit of the investment, PHM systems must provide early detection of precursors for failure modes. Incipient fault detection i