The reinforced concrete-steel hybrid wind turbine tower is a new type of wind turbine structure. The initiation of cracks in concrete has obvious influence on the durability of the wind turbine tower and it is critical to monitor the initiation and development of cracks in concrete of the hybrid tower. In this paper, a PZT based stress wave propagation measurement and analysis method for the crack initiation and propagation monitoring is proposed. The experimental study on the crack initiation and propagation monitoring for a scale reinforced concrete-steel hybrid tower model is carried out. A number of PZT patches are mounted on the surface of the concrete tower and some of them are used as actuator and the others are used as sensors for stress wave measurement. The high frequency sine signal from a signal generator is used to actuate the PZT actuator and the stress wave is measured by different sensors under different load cases. A damage index based on the amplitude is defined and it can be employed to detect the location of the cracks in the concrete tower and changes with the development of cracks. The proposed approach can be employed to monitor the cracks in concrete-steel hybrid wind turbine tower.