Digital Twin Technology in Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring, Predictive Maintenance, and RUL Estimation: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The rapid growth of wind energy has increased the need for advanced condition monitoring (CM), predictive maintenance, and remaining useful life (RUL) estimation strategies for wind turbines. In this context, digital twins (DTs) have emerged as a key tool for improving reliability, availability, and operational efficiency by integrating physical models, operational data, and artificial intelligence (AI). This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) aimed at analyzing the state of the art, classifying the main applications, and identifying research gaps. A rigorous search protocol was applied across scientific databases, considering inclusion and exclusion criteria and analysis categories aligned with four research questions. The results show a high concentration of studies on critical wind turbine components, a predominance of hybrid physics-based and data-driven approaches, and an increasing use of deep learning (DL) models. However, several research gaps remain, including the predominance of component-level digital twin implementations rather than system-level architectures, the lack of standardized datasets and benchmarking frameworks, and challenges related to SCADA data heterogeneity and real-time scalability. It is concluded that DTs are evolving toward more autonomous and prescriptive systems; however, they still require further maturation for widespread industrial adoption.