Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Leahy, Kevin; Gallagher, Colm; O'Donovan, Peter; O'Sullivan, Dominic T. J.
2018
July
IET Renewable Power Generation
Cluster analysis of wind turbine alarms for characterising and classifying stoppages
Validated
()
Optional Fields
Feature extraction Pattern classification Pattern clustering Wind power plants Wind turbines Wind turbine alarm system Cluster analysis Stoppage classification Stoppage characterization Alarm sequences Sequence associated characteristics Silhouette analysis Manual inspection Information overload
12
10
1146
1154
Turbine alarm systems can give useful information to remote technicians on the cause of a fault or stoppage. However, alarms are generally generated at much too high a rate to gain meaningful insight from on their own, so generally require extensive domain knowledge to interpret. By grouping together commonly occurring alarm sequences, the burden of analysis can be reduced. Instead of analysing many individual alarms that occur during a stoppage, the stoppage can be linked to a commonly occurring sequence of alarms. Hence, maintenance technicians can be given information about the shared characteristics or root causes of stoppages where that particular alarm sequence appeared in the past. This research presents a methodology to identify relevant alarms from specific turbine assemblies and group together similar alarm sequences as they appear during stoppages. Batches of sequences associated with 456 different stoppages are created, and features are extracted from these batches representing the order the alarms appeared in. The batches are grouped together using clustering techniques, and evaluated using silhouette analysis and manual inspection. Results show that almost half of all stoppages can be attributed to one of 15 different clusters of alarm sequences.
1752-1416
10.1049/iet-rpg.2017.0422
Grant Details