An offshore wind turbine mechanical-power electronic coupled fault diagnostic tool

In recent years in the offshore wind industry, auction prices for energy have declined in Denmark, Germany and England. This decline can be linked to three main issues 1) access to the offshore grid network, 2) bigger turbines and 3) improved development, installation and commission experience. Nonetheless, an aspect of offshore wind requiring further development is operations and maintenance as these costs are currently one third of the total life cycle of a wind turbine. Utilising an effective management/planning tool for offshore wind turbine stops, downtime and fault diagnostics will provide a plethora of benefits - increasing the supply of energy, reducing the dependence and need for imported fossil fuels, hence reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving the management of spending in the industry. Offshore systems require high man power investment, data storage and monitoring 24 7, 365 days a year as each offshore turbine operates with approximately 3,200 parameters, gathered at different time resolutions. Since many turbines are still currently under full warranty, ‘service’ costs are not a major concern within operations and maintenance. As warranties expire, organising maintenance will become a major section of the wind turbine industry to ensure that this industry will be sustained on a commercial basis to provide energy into the long term future. The aim of this work is to create a novel cloud-based mechanical-power electronic coupled fault diagnostic tool which will identify service and equipment requirements and optimise logistics of technicians and crew of transfer vessels proactively, rather than reactively, to reduce operational and maintenance costs. This paper presents the first stage of this development of this proactive tool.