Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring Using the SSA-Optimized Self-Attention BiLSTM Network and Changepoint Detection Algorithm

Condition-monitoring and anomaly-detection methods used for the assessment of wind turbines are key to reducing operation and maintenance (O&M) cost and improving their reliability. In this study, based on the sparrow search algorithm (SSA), bidirectional long short-term memory networks with a self-attention mechanism (SABiLSTM), and a binary segmentation changepoint detection algorithm (BinSegCPD), a condition-monitoring method (SSA-SABiLSTM-BinSegCPD, SSD) used for wind turbines is proposed. Specifically, the self-attention mechanism, which can mine the nonlinear dynamic characteristics and spatial–temporal features inherent in the SCADA time series, was introduced into a two-layer BiLSTM network to establish a normal-behavior model for wind turbine key components. Then, as a result of the advantages of searching precision and convergence rate methods, the sparrow search algorithm was employed to optimize the constructed SABiLSTM model. Moreover, the BinSegCPD algorithm was applied to the predicted residual sequence to achieve the automatic identification of deterioration conditions for wind turbines. Case studies conducted on multiple wind turbines located in south China showed that the established SSA-SABiLSTM model was superior to other contrast models, achieving a better prediction precision in terms of RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and R(2). The MAE, RMSE, and MAPE of SSA-SABiLSTM were 0.2543 °C, 0.3412 °C, and 0.0069, which were 47.23%, 42.19%, and 53.38% lower than those of SABiLSTM, respectively. The R(2) of SABiLSTM was 0.9731, which was 4.6% higher than that of SABiLSTM. The proposed SSD method can detect deterioration conditions 47–120 h in advance and trigger fault alarm signals approximately 36 h ahead of the actual failure time.