Automatic Imbalance Identification in Wind Turbines

Background: Rotor imbalances of a wind power plant can cause severe damages of the plant or its components and thus reduce the lifespan and security significantly. At present balancing of the rotor is a time consuming and expensive process. Method of approach: We describe a new method for the automatic detection and reconstruction of imbalances in the rotor of a wind turbine. The method is based on a wind turbine model which is derived by the Finite Element Method (FEM). The computation of an imbalance from vibration data measured at the nacelle is an inverse problem. Results: The proposed reconstruction algorithm works well with artificial and real data and is operating in real time. Conclusions: The new method reduces the measuring eort for the computation of balancing weights. It can be implemented in a Condition Monitoring System.