Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis are currently considered crucial means to increase the reliability and availability of wind turbines, and consequently, to reduce the wind energy cost. With similar goals, direct drive wind turbines based on permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) with full-scale power converters are an emerging and promising technology. Numerous studies show that power converters are a significant contributor to the overall failure rate of modern wind turbines. In this context, open-circuit fault diagnosis in the two power converters of a PMSG drive for wind turbine applications is addressed in this paper. A diagnostic method is proposed for each power converter, allowing real-time detection and localization of multiple open-circuit faults. The proposed methods are suitable for integration into the drive controller and to trigger remedial actions. In order to prove the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed fault diagnostic methods, several simulation and experimental results are presented. Index Terms-Condition monitoring, fault diagnosis, multiple power switch open-circuit faults, permanent magnet machines, semiconductor device reliability, wind power generation I. INTRODUCTIONost reduction of the generated wind energy is essential for the wind power penetration to keep increasing quickly, through more efficient, reliable and cost-effective wind turbines. Hence, the wind turbines based on PMSGs drives are a promising technology [1], avoiding the use of gearboxes. Furthermore, along with the PMSG, a full-scale power converter is required, which allows variable speed operation and the fulfillment of rigorous grid codes.Several issues related to wind turbines such as power quality, systems stability [2] and ride-through capability during grid faults [3] have been considered over the last few years. More recently, reliability and availability of wind Manuscript

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