A stochastic DEVS wind turbine component model for wind farm simulation

Wind farms use several wind turbines to generate electricity and provide a renewable source of energy. However, due to large forces as a result of hourly and seasonal variations in wind speed and direction, wind turbines experience stochastic loading that often lead to failures of wind turbine components such as the gearbox and generator. Wind turbine failures result in costly repairs and loss in revenue, while stochastic loading makes it difficult to predict the actual condition of a wind turbine. Consequently, it is challenging to schedule maintenance actions to avoid wind turbine component failures. In this paper, we present a stochastic discrete event system specification (STDEVS) model of a wind turbine component. In particular, we consider the wind turbine gearbox, which is one of the components that is often prone to failure, and model its stochastic degradation process. We implement a wind farm simulation with the STDEVS gearbox model and report on the impact of gearbox failures and maintenance scheduling on the performance of a wind farm over a 20-year period.