Hybrid system of ART and RBF neural networks for classification of vibration signals and operational states of wind turbines

Abstract

In recent years wind energy has been the fastest growing branch of the power generation industry. Maintenance of the wind turbine generates its the largest cost. A remote monitoring is a common method to reduce this cost. Growing number of monitored turbines requires an automatized way of support for diagnostic experts. Early fault detection and identification is still a very challenging task. A tool, which can alert an engineer about potentially dangerous cases, is required to work in real-time. The goal of this paper is to show an efficient system to online classification of operational states of the wind turbines and to detecting their early fault cases. The proposed system was designed as a hybrid of ART-2 and RBF networks. It had been proved before that the ART-type ANNs can successfully recognize operational states of a wind turbine during the diagnostic process. There are some difficulties, however, when classification is done in real-time. The disadvantages of using a classic ART-2 network are pointed and it is explained why the RBF unit of the hybrid system is needed to have a proper classification of turbine operational states. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.