Improving the Availability of Wind Turbine Generator Systems

Wind energy is becoming an important contributor in the world’s energy needs. An important trend in wind turbine design is the focus on reliability and increased availability of wind turbines. This is the aim of the study. It focusses its attention on the generator and power electronic converter due to the susceptibility of the generator system to failure. The first step is identifying the problem. This is achieved by a review of existing studies in failure rates and failure mechanisms to identify critical failures, their probabilities and their failure mechanisms. This is followed by the identification of approaches that can be used to increase the availability of wind turbine generator systems, focussing on – component reliability, active control, and fault tolerance. It identifies three aspects that are analysed in detail...