Modelling and control of large wind turbine

Abstract: In order to make the wind energy an economical alternative for energy production, upscaling of turbine to 10 - 15MW may be necessary to reduce the overall cost of energy production. This production target requires a considerable increase in the turbine size and placing the turbines at high wind speed locations. But increase in turbine size also increases the uneven load distribution across the turbine structure. Therefore an efficient load reduction technique is necessary to increase the turbine reliability in high wind speed locations. Variable speed wind turbine offers most desirable load reduction through actively pitch angle control of turbine blades. Research has shown that the Individual Pitch Control (IPC) is most promising option for turbine load reduction. This thesis work is focused on modelling of a large wind turbine and implementation of a new mutlivariable control concept for turbine load reduction. A detailed mathematical model is designed which includes turbine blade and tower dynamics and a proposed Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) algorithm is implemented for Individual Pitch Control (IPC) loop of wind turbine. Proposed model in this thesis work is derived from the previous turbine model used in ECN with additional tower dynamics. My contribution in turbine modelling portion is to linearize the equations of motion to form a statespace model and to implement LQG algorithm for turbine active load reduction. This proposed method is compared with the previous control technique used in ECN for turbine fatigue load reduction to measure the overall efficiency of the proposed technique. Fatigue load has major effect on the turbine working age. In quantitative way, proposed LGQ design offers 8-10% approx. more fatigue load reduction in comparison with the previous design. In simple convention, decrease in turbine fatigue load increases the turbine age. This 8 - 10% fatigue load reduction offers 8 - 10% minimum increase in turbine working age which means that if a turbine works for 20 years in total for energy production, this proposed technique will add 2 extra years into the turbine working life. This age increase has major economic impact to make the wind turbine a viable alternative for energy production.