Patent Document ID: 20130073223
Application ID: 13674200
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for predicting an end of life of a wind turbine component wherein a processor transforms electronic data into a prognostic evaluation, the method comprising: receiving environmental conditions indicative of natural surroundings of wind turbines within a wind turbine farm; receiving component performance metrics indicative of an operation of wind turbines within a wind turbine farm; distributing the wind turbines into peer-clusters such that the wind turbines within each of the peer-clusters have similar environmental conditions; identifying a low performing wind turbine and a remaining portion of wind turbines within one of the peer-clusters based upon a predicted performance model; processing the component performance metrics of the low performing wind turbine and the remaining portion of wind turbines to extract fault condition indicators that correlate the component performance metrics to failure modes; identifying a critical component of the low performing wind turbine by contrasting the fault condition indicators of the low performing wind turbine with the remaining portion; and predicting the end of life of the critical component of the low performing wind turbine based upon the component performance metrics of the remaining portion of wind turbines.