Smart Fibre Optic Monitoring Systems for Wind Generator Asset Management (FULLY FUNDED)

Student background required:
The potential candidate should ideally have a background in power generation systems including electrical machines, as well as understanding of mechanical engineering, signal processing and sensing principles.

Benefit to / Impact on Industry:
There is an impending need for improvement of conventional and low carbon power generation operation and maintenance cost, much of which is related to the generator unit failures. This research will develop novel monitoring solutions and early failure detection techniques aimed at enabling improved generator operation and maintenance practices and reducing the energy production costs.

What novelty will the student base their PhD on?
The project will investigate the application of recent significant advances in fibre optic sensing technology in the power network elements. This research will investigate the design and application of a new distributed fibre optic sensing network for generator units to provide high diagnostic reliability failure detection and management systems.

Project overview:
The current operation and maintenance (O&M) cost in conventional and in particular the renewable power generation is significant and reductions are necessary in order to ensure the economic viability of the proposed low carbon networks of the future. Much of the reported O&M cost is related to generator unit failures where conventional techniques used for condition monitoring have proved insufficient in providing early failure warning to the system operator. For example, the O&M cost in wind power generation systems is considerably affected by generator failures and has been reported to be as high as ≈20-25% of total cost per kWh produced over turbine lifetime. The latest developments in the fibre optic sensing arena allow the measurement of generator and other power network units’ critical parameters that previously could not be sensed. This work will investigate the application of fibre optic sensing for ac generator units’ asset management applications with an aim to deliver an improvement in early detection of typical electrical and mechanical faults and investigate the improved motor thermal management and fault mitigation techniques.

Outline of Proposed Project Plan:
Year 1: Taught courses and preparatory study
Year 2: Literature review on current standards and demands for power network generator systems in conventional and wind power applications, review of existing fault detection and monitoring techniques; familiarisation with the state-of-the-art in fibre optic sensing of strain, stress and temperature and the requirements of ac generator sensing for fault detection and monitoring purposes. Identification of the potential and requirements of fibre optic sensing applications in ac generators including the initial design of a fibre optic sensing network for a typical wind generator. Design of a laboratory test rig to emulate a typical wind generator field application.
Year 3: Laboratory test rig development, including the design and implementation of the proposed fibre optic sensing network. Experimental research of generator operation under various faulty conditions including typical electrical and mechanical faults and evaluation of the proposed fibre optic network’s performance in delivering improved early fault indicators; further refinement of the sensing network design to optimise its performance.
Year 4: Development of real time application techniques for ‘live’ detection of generator faults. Sensing network integration with the generator controller to develop improved asset management techniques for early fault detection and fault effect mitigation.