Condition based maintenance of wind power generation systems considering different turbine types and lead times

Condition monitoring measurements can be obtained from wind turbine components and be utilized to evaluate and predict the health conditions of the components and the turbines, and for scheduling condition based maintenance (CBM) activities. In existing work, all the wind turbines are assumed to be of the same type, and the lead times of different components are assumed to be constant. This is not the case in many practical applications. In this paper, we develop a CBM approach for wind turbine systems considering different types of wind turbines in a wind farm, and different lead times for different components, which lead to more accurate modeling of CBM activities in actual wind farms. In the proposed CBM approach, we present a new CBM policy involving two design variables for each turbine type, a method for turbine failure probability evaluation considering different lead times, and a CBM cost evaluation method. Numerical examples demonstrate the proposed CBM approach.