The PHM Society sponsors a data challenge annually, open to anyone. In addition to bragging rights, there is a cash prize for the winners in both the student and professional categories. However, the most exciting element of the challenge is the algorithms of the winning teams are published in detail in ijPHM, advancing the field of PHM as an engineering discipline. Moreover, the data set from each competition becomes a benchmark for future researchers to compare performance of their algorithms.

This year the challenge was focused on anemometer fault detection, a critical problem for the wind power industry, strongly affecting among other things the financing of a potential site. Participants were scored based on their ability to identify faulty anemometers in two data sets. More detail about the Challenge can be found here

The Society is quite grateful to NRG Systems for providing the data that made the Challenge possible. Additionally, we would like to thank Eric Bechhoefer at NRG Systems for taking the time to prepare the data.

The Student (and overall) winner this year was David Siegel of the University of Cincinnati. The winner in the professional category was Danny Parker of Miltec Research & Technology. Congratulations to both teams!