Windmills can operate for six months or more without any maintenance or supervision. They operate in some of the worse environmental conditions imaginable; all seasons of the year, in temperature extremes, in lightning storms, snow storms, high summer humidity as well as in dry arid extremes.

This white paper recommends what I/O typically needs to be monitored and what controllers are best suited on a windmill in order to provide the safest and longest trouble-free operation. Moreover, due to the special environmental nature of the application, what signal conditioning hardware should be used to assure successful operation.

Dataforth white paper on "Wind Turbines Today"
http://www.dataforth.com/catalog/pdf/Wind_Turbines_Today.pdf