PREDICTION OF WIND TURBINE BLADE FATIGUE LOADS USING FEED-FORWARD NEURAL NETWORKS

Abstract: In recent years, machine learning applications have gained great attention in the wind power industry. Among these, artificial neural networks have been utilized to predict the fatigue loads of wind turbine components such as rotor blades. However, the limited number of contributions and differences in the used databases give rise to several questions which this study has aimed to answer. Therefore, in this study, 5-min SCADA data from the Lillgrund wind farm has been used to train two feed-forward neural networks to predict the fatigue loads at the blade root in flapwise and edgewise directions in the shape of damage equivalent loads.The contribution of different features to the model’s performance is evaluated. In the absence of met mast measurements, mesoscale NEWA data are utilized to present the free flow condition. Also, the effect of wake condition on the model’s accuracy is examined. Besides, the generalization ability of the model trained on data points from one or multiple turbines on other turbines within the farm is investigated. The results show that the best accuracy was achieved for a model with 34 features, 5 hidden layers with 100 neurons in each hidden layer for the flapwise direction. For the edgewise direction, the best model has 54 features, 6 hidden layers, and 125 neurons in each hidden layer.For a model trained and tested on the same turbine, mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of 0.78% and 9.31% are achieved for the flapwise and edgewise directions, respectively. The seen difference is argued to be a result of not having enough data points throughout the range of edgewise moments. The use of NEWA data has been shown to improve the model’s accuracy by 10% for MAPE values, relatively. Training the model under different wake conditions did not improve the model showing that the wake effects are captured through the input features to some extent. Generalization of the model trained on data points from one turbine resulted in poor results in the flapwise direction. It was shown that using data points from multiple turbines can improve the model’s accuracy to predict loading on other turbines.