Wind turbine fault detection using counter-based residual thresholding

Up-down counters are commonly used in the aerospace industry for fault detection thresholding. This paper applies the up-down counter technique to detect wind turbine faults. The thresholding problem involves a tradeoff between false alarms and missed detections. Counter based thresholding can detect smaller faults with higher probability and lower false alarms than is possible using simple constant thresholds. This improvement is achieved by effectively introducing dynamics into the thresholding logic as opposed to decisioning based on a single time step. Up down counters are applied to the development of a fault detection system for a commercial sized 4.8MW wind turbine. Realistic fault scenarios in the sensing, actuation and drivetrain subsystems are considered. It is seen that most faults can be detected with fast detection times and minimal false alarms without implementation of more complex filtering and detection techniques on residuals.