In recent years, the global energy mix is shifting towards sustainable energy systems due to the energy crisis and the prominence of ecological climate change. Wind energy resources are abundant in cold regions, and wind turbines are increasingly operating in cold regions with wet natural environments, increasing the risk of wind turbine blade icing. To address the problem of noise source distribution and the frequency characteristic variation of wind turbines in natural icing environments, this paper uses a 112-channel microphone array to acquire the acoustic signals of a horizontal axis wind turbine with a diameter of 2.45m. Using the beamforming technique, the wind turbine noise evolution law characteristics under natural icing environment were studied by field experiments, and the noise source distribution and noise increase in different frequency bands under different icing mass and positions and different angles of attack were analyzed in detail. The results show that under the leading-edge and windward-side icing, the noise source gradually moves toward the blade tip along the spanwise direction with the increase in ice mass. In addition, the total sound pressure level at 460 r/min, 520 r/min, 580 r/min, and 640 r/min are increased by 0.82 dB, 0.85 dB, 0.91 dB, and 0.95 dB, respectively for the leading-edge icing condition in comparison with the uniform icing over the windward side of the blade.

More and more wind turbines are installed in cold regions because of better wind resources. In these regions, the high humidity and low temperatures in winter will lead to ice accumulation on the wind turbine impeller. A different icing location or mass will lead to different natural frequency variations of the impeller. In order to monitor the icing situation in time and in advance, a method based on depth neural network technology to predict the icing mass is explored and proposed. Natural-environment icing experiments and iced-impeller modal experiments are carried out, aiming at a 600 W wind turbine, respectively. The mapping relationship between the change rate of the natural frequency of the iced impeller at different icing positions and the icing mass is obtained, and the correlation coefficients are all above 0.93. A deep neural network (DNN) prediction model of ice-coating quality for the impeller was constructed with the change rate of the first six-order natural frequencies as the input factor. The results show that the MAE and MSE of the trained model are close to 0. The average prediction error of the DNN model is 4.79%, 9.35%, 3.62%, 1.63%, respectively, under different icing states of the impeller. It can be seen that the DNN shows the best prediction ability among other methods. The smaller the actual ice-covered mass of the impeller, the larger the relative error of the ice-covered mass predicted by the DNN model. In the same ice-covered state, the relative error will decrease gradually with the increase in ice-covered mass. In a word, using the natural frequency change rate to predict the icing quality is feasible and accurate. The research achievements shown here can provide a new idea for wind farms to realize efficient and intelligent icing monitoring and prediction, provide engineering guidance for the wind turbine blade anti-icing and deicing field, and further reduce the negative impact of icing on wind power generation.