The Surveillance Centre

The Brüel & Kjær Vibro surveillance centre consists of a team of ISO 18436 certified diagnostic specialists dedicated to monitoring wind turbines. In addition to facilitating and optimising the diagnosis of incipient faults, the centre establishes clear procedures for integrating the information and workflow between the surveillance centre and the operator service departments. Data from all the wind turbines is sent by the data acquisition units in the nacelle of each turbine to the central data acquisition server and database. An advanced alarm management system in the server compares the data to pre-defined limits, intelligently reduces the flood of alarms that normally occurs because of wind gusting, cross-signal transmission, etc. to prioritise and then issue qualified alarms.

In the event of alarm data, time signals are downloaded from the respective wind turbine for post-processing and analysis. The Brüel & Kjær Vibro Surveillance Centre then issues alarm reports to the customer’s service department. When wind turbine components are serviced, feedback is given to the Surveillance Centre so diagnostic techniques, severity assessment and lead-time evaluations can be evaluated and further fine-tuned.

The Surveillance Centre also takes care of the monitoring hardware in the wind turbines.