Online Dynamic Reliability Evaluation of Wind Turbines based on Drone-assisted Monitoring
This work addresses the need for real-time reliability evaluation in offshore wind energy operations to improve maintenance and availability, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing condition monitoring systems.
The paper tackles the problem of offline reliability evaluation in wind farms by proposing a drone-assisted monitoring method for online dynamic reliability assessment of wind turbines, using a blade system as an example to demonstrate the approach.
The offshore wind energy is increasingly becoming an attractive source of energy due to having lower environmental impact. Effective operation and maintenance that ensures the maximum availability of the energy generation process using offshore facilities and minimal production cost are two key factors to improve the competitiveness of this energy source over other traditional sources of energy. Condition monitoring systems are widely used for health management of offshore wind farms to have improved operation and maintenance. Reliability of the wind farms are increasingly being evaluated to aid in the maintenance process and thereby to improve the availability of the farms. However, much of the reliability analysis is performed offline based on statistical data. In this article, we propose a drone-assisted monitoring based method for online reliability evaluation of wind turbines. A blade system of a wind turbine is used as an illustrative example to demonstrate the proposed approach.