Perspectives on SCADA Data Analysis Methods for Multivariate Wind Turbine Power Curve Modeling

Wind turbines are rotating machines which are subjected to non-stationary conditions and their power depends non-trivially on ambient conditions and working parameters. Therefore, monitoring the performance of wind turbines is a complicated task because it is critical to construct normal behavior models for the theoretical power which should be extracted. The power curve is the relation between the wind speed and the power and it is widely used to monitor wind turbine performance. Nowadays, it is commonly accepted that a reliable model for the power curve should be customized on the wind turbine and on the site of interest: this has boosted the use of SCADA for data-driven approaches to wind turbine power curve and has therefore stimulated the use of artificial intelligence and applied statistics methods. In this regard, a promising line of research regards multivariate approaches to the wind turbine power curve: these are based on incorporating additional environmental information or working parameters as input variables for the data-driven model, whose output is the produced power. The rationale for a multivariate approach to wind turbine power curve is the potential decrease of the error metrics of the regression: this allows monitoring the performance of the target wind turbine more precisely. On these grounds, in this manuscript, the state-of-the-art is discussed as regards multivariate SCADA data analysis methods for wind turbine power curve modeling and some promising research perspectives are indicated.

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Multivariate SCADA Data Analysis Methods for Real-World Wind Turbine Power Curve Monitoring

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14041105 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 1105 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Davide Astolfi ◽

Francesco Castellani ◽

Andrea Lombardi ◽

Ludovico Terzi

Keyword(s):

Standard Deviation ◽

Wind Turbine ◽

Wind Turbines ◽

Curve Analysis ◽

Gaussian Kernel ◽

Support Vector ◽

Features Selection ◽

Power Curve ◽

Working Parameters ◽

Extracted Power

Due to the stochastic nature of the source, wind turbines operate under non-stationary conditions and the extracted power depends non-trivially on ambient conditions and working parameters. It is therefore difficult to establish a normal behavior model for monitoring the performance of a wind turbine and the most employed approach is to be driven by data. The power curve of a wind turbine is the relation between the wind intensity and the extracted power and is widely employed for monitoring wind turbine performance. On the grounds of the above considerations, a recent trend regarding wind turbine power curve analysis consists of the incorporation of the main working parameters (as, for example, the rotor speed or the blade pitch) as input variables of a multivariate regression whose target is the power. In this study, a method for multivariate wind turbine power curve analysis is proposed: it is based on sequential features selection, which employs Support Vector Regression with Gaussian Kernel. One of the most innovative aspects of this study is that the set of possible covariates includes also minimum, maximum and standard deviation of the most important environmental and operational variables. Three test cases of practical interest are contemplated: a Senvion MM92, a Vestas V90 and a Vestas V117 wind turbines owned by the ENGIE Italia company. It is shown that the selection of the covariates depends remarkably on the wind turbine model and this aspect should therefore be taken in consideration in order to customize the data-driven monitoring of the power curve. The obtained error metrics are competitive and in general lower with respect to the state of the art in the literature. Furthermore, minimum, maximum and standard deviation of the main environmental and operation variables are abundantly selected by the feature selection algorithm: this result indicates that the richness of the measurement channels contained in wind turbine Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) data sets should be exploited for monitoring the performance as reliably as possible.

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Data-driven multivariate power curve modeling of offshore wind turbines

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.1016/j.engappai.2016.08.003 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 55 ◽

pp. 331-338 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Olivier Janssens ◽

Nymfa Noppe ◽

Christof Devriendt ◽

Rik Van de Walle ◽

Sofie Van Hoecke

Keyword(s):

Wind Turbines ◽

Offshore Wind ◽

Data Driven ◽

Power Curve ◽

Offshore Wind Turbines ◽

Curve Modeling

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Estimation of the Performance Aging of the Vestas V52 Wind Turbine through Comparative Test Case Analysis

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14040915 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 915 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Davide Astolfi ◽

Raymond Byrne ◽

Francesco Castellani

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

Wind Speed ◽

Wind Turbine ◽

Wind Turbines ◽

Rotational Speed ◽

General Idea ◽

Gaussian Kernel ◽

Test Cases ◽

Power Curve ◽

The Given

It is a common sense expectation that the efficiency of wind turbines should decline with age, similarly to what happens with most technical systems. Due to the complexity of this kind of machine and the environmental conditions to which it is subjected, it is far from obvious how to reliably estimate the impact of aging. In this work, the aging of five Vestas V52 wind turbines is analyzed. The test cases belong to two different sites: one is at the Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland, and four are sited in an industrial wind farm in a mountainous area in Italy. Innovative data analysis techniques are employed: the general idea consists of considering appropriate operation curves depending on the working control region of the wind turbines. When the wind turbine operates at fixed pitch and variable rotational speed, the generator speed-power curve is studied; for higher wind speed, when the rotational speed has saturated and the blade pitch is variable, the blade pitch-power curve is considered. The operation curves of interest are studied through the binning method and through a support vector regression with a Gaussian kernel. The wind turbine test cases are analyzed vertically (each in its own history) and horizontally, by comparing the behavior at the two sites for the given wind turbine age. The main result of this study is that an evident effect of aging is the worsening of generator efficiency: progressively, less power is extracted for the given generator rotational speed. Nevertheless, this effect is observed to be lower for the wind turbines in Italy (order of −1.5% at 12 years of age with respect to seven years of age) with respect to the Dundalk wind turbine, which shows a sharp decline at 12 years of age (−8.8%). One wind turbine sited in Italy underwent a generator replacement in 2018: through the use of the same kind of data analysis methods, it was possible to observe that an average performance recovery of the order of 2% occurs after the component replacement. It also arises that for all the test cases, a slight aging effect is visible for higher wind speed, which can likely be interpreted as due to declining gearbox efficiency. In general, it is confirmed that the aging of wind turbines is strongly dependent on the history of each machine, and it is likely confirmed that the technology development mitigates the effect of aging.

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Wind Turbine Power Curve Upgrades: Part II

Energies ◽

10.3390/en12081503 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 1503 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Davide Astolfi ◽

Francesco Castellani

Keyword(s):

Wind Turbine ◽

Wind Turbines ◽

Principal Component Regression ◽

Principal Component ◽

Data Driven ◽

Power Curve ◽

Yaw Control ◽

Production Improvement ◽

The Difference ◽

Management Optimization

Wind turbine power upgrades have recently become a debated topic in wind energy research. Their assessment poses some challenges and calls for devoted techniques: some reasons are the stochastic nature of the wind and the multivariate dependency of wind turbine power. In this work, two test cases were studied. The former is the yaw management optimization on a 2 MW wind turbine; the latter is a comprehensive control upgrade (pitch, yaw, and cut-out) for 850 kW wind turbines. The upgrade impact was estimated by analyzing the difference between the post-upgrade power and a data-driven simulation of the power if the upgrade did not take place. Therefore, a reliable model for the pre-upgrade power of the wind turbines of interest was needed and, in this work, a principal component regression was employed. The yaw control optimization was shown to provide a 1.3% of production improvement and the control re-powering provided 2.5%. Another qualifying point was that, for the 850 kW wind turbine re-powering, the data quality was sufficient for an upgrade estimate based on power curve analysis and a good agreement with the model result was obtained. Summarizing, evidence of the profitability of wind turbine power upgrades was collected and data-driven methods were elaborated for power upgrade assessment and, in general, for wind turbine performance control and monitoring.

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