Low Effort L-i Nuclear Fusion Plasma Control Using Model Predictive Control Laws

One of the main problems of fusion energy is to achieve longer pulse duration by avoiding the premature reaction decay due to plasma instabilities. The control of the plasma inductance arises as an essential tool for the successful operation of tokamak fusion reactors in order to overcome stability issues as well as the new challenges specific to advanced scenarios operation. In this sense, given that advanced tokamaks will suffer from limited power available from noninductive current drive actuators, the transformer primary coil could assist in reducing the power requirements of the noninductive current drive sources needed for current profile control. Therefore, tokamak operation may benefit from advanced control laws beyond the traditionally used PID schemes by reducing instabilities while guaranteeing the tokamak integrity. In this paper, a novel model predictive control (MPC) scheme has been developed and successfully employed to optimize both current and internal inductance of the plasma, which influences the L-H transition timing, the density peaking, and pedestal pressure. Results show that the internal inductance and current profiles can be adequately controlled while maintaining the minimal control action required in tokamak operation.This work was supported in part by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) through Research Projects GIU11/02 and GIU14/07, Research and Training Unit UFI11/07, and by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) through Research Project ENE2010-18345. The authors would also like to thank the collaboration of the Basque Energy Board (EVE) through Agreement UPV/EHUEVE23/6/2011, the Spanish National Fusion Laboratory (EURATOM-CIEMAT) through Agreement UPV/EHUCIEMAT08/190, and Jo Lister, Stefano Coda, and the TCV team for its collaboration and help. Authors are also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers that have helped to improve the initial version of the paper

Low Effort Nuclear Fusion Plasma Control Using Model Predictive Control Laws

One of the main problems of fusion energy is to achieve longer pulse duration by avoiding the premature reaction decay due to plasma instabilities. The control of the plasma inductance arises as an essential tool for the successful operation of tokamak fusion reactors in order to overcome stability issues as well as the new challenges specific to advanced scenarios operation. In this sense, given that advanced tokamaks will suffer from limited power available from noninductive current drive actuators, the transformer primary coil could assist in reducing the power requirements of the noninductive current drive sources needed for current profile control. Therefore, tokamak operation may benefit from advanced control laws beyond the traditionally used PID schemes by reducing instabilities while guaranteeing the tokamak integrity. In this paper, a novel model predictive control (MPC) scheme has been developed and successfully employed to optimize both current and internal inductance of the plasma, which influences the L-H transition timing, the density peaking, and pedestal pressure. Results show that the internal inductance and current profiles can be adequately controlled while maintaining the minimal control action required in tokamak operation

Controlo e supervisão em sistemas de conversão de energia eólica

A tese inclui o estudo e a análise do desempenho de um sistema de conversão de energia eólica onshore. Numa primeira fase são estudados os modelos matemáticos de uma turbina eólica de velocidade variável com controlo de potência por ajuste do ângulo do passo da pá. Seguidamente, são estudados diferentes tipos de controladores tais como controladores de ordem inteira, controladores de ordem fracionária, controladores de lógica difusa, controladores adaptativos e controladores preditivos e é efetuado o estudo de um supervisor baseado em máquinas de estados finitos. Os controladores estão incluídos numa estrutura hierárquica com dois níveis, situados no nível inferior, e têm como função controlar a potência elétrica de saída tendo como referência a potência nominal. No nível superior está incluído o supervisor, baseado em máquinas de estados finitos que tem como função determinar os estados operacionais de acordo com a velocidade de vento. Os modelos matemáticos estudados são integrados nas simulações computacionais para o sistema de conversão de energia eólica e os resultados numéricos obtidos permitem concluir sobre o desempenho do sistema ligado à rede elétrica. O sistema de conversão de energia eólica é constituído por uma turbina eólica de velocidade variável, um sistema de transmissão mecânico descrito por um veio de duas massas, uma caixa de velocidades, um gerador de indução com o rotor duplamente alimentado e um conversor eletrónico de energia de dois níveis; CONTROL AND SUPERVISION OF WIND ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEMS Abstract: The thesis includes the study and analysis of the performance of an onshore wind energy conversion system. First, mathematical models of a variable speed wind turbine with pitch control are studied, followed by the study of different controller types such as integer order controllers, fractional order controllers, fuzzy logic controllers, adaptive controllers and predictive controllers and the study of a supervisor based on finite state machines is also studied. The controllers are included in the lower level of a hierarchical structure composed by two levels whose objective is to control the electrical output power around the rated power. The supervisor included at the higher level is based on finite state machines whose objective is to analyze the operational states according to the wind speed. The studied mathematical models are integrated into computer simulations for the wind energy conversion system and the obtained numerical results allow for the performance assessment of the system connected to the electric grid. The wind energy conversion system is composed by a variable speed wind turbine, a mechanical transmission system described by a two mass drive train, a gearbox, a doubly fed induction generator rotor and by a two level converter