Conditional monitoring and fault detection of wind turbines based on Kolmogorov–Smirnov non-parametric test

Abstract

This research presents a new method for conditional monitoring based on the wind turbine power curve. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) distribution test is employed in the assessment of turbine data and the detection of abnormality (faults) in wind turbines. The process begins with anomaly detection and filtration of faulty SCADA data by a quantile-based filtration approach. Suitable data comprising wind speed, air density, ambient temperature, and pitch angle are utilized in the development of wind turbine power curve models that represents actualities within wind farms. The radial basis function (RBF), multi-layer Perceptron (MLP), and gradient boosting (GBR) methods utilized for model development are compared for predictive accuracy using Mariano-Preve test. The null hypothesis assumes equal predictive ability (EPA); if rejected, an algorithm compares the coefficients of correlation of the models and selects the closest to one (unity). The most accurate model is utilized for the creation of a bin-wise distribution from past data, and bin-wise confidence levels from the plot of wind speed and output power. Cochran’s method was utilized to validate the minimum sample size that will possess a sampling distribution similar to that of the population, and a fault is detected if there is a reasonable difference between the sample distribution and population distribution. The K-S test, having a null hypothesis of equivalent distributions, signals a fault if the null hypothesis is rejected. Two wind turbine SCADA datasets associated with two fault events are used for the assessment of our method. The results indicate that our method effectively discovers abnormalities in power output relating to increased bearing temperature and reduced generator rpm, thereby aiding in the detection of faults long before they occur.