In-service monitoring of wind-turbine (W/T) blades during operation presents practical difficulties due to accessibility restrictions, nature of the material, size and geometry of the blades as well as power requirements. As a result, attempts for health monitoring of wind turbine blades are limited. In the present paper, health monitoring of the blades of an operating NEG-MICON NM48/750 with acoustic emission (AE) will be discussed. Included are W/T instrumentation and various other technical apparatus that was applied in order to overcome power limitations, remote monitoring set up, as well as development of software for automated statistical processing of AE data. The AE module was successfully operated and acquired data, under real operating conditions for more than six months. Results are presented from AE measurements acquired under different operating conditions, correlated with parametric data and analyzed with both linear location and advanced AE data processing techniques. Finally the paper discusses the system performance during its total installation time and operating conditions, demonstrating the fast integration into existing structures and its modularity to external systems and data exchange, making it a good candidate for real-time monitoring of industrial size wind generators.
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