Active sensor fault tolerant output feedback tracking control for wind turbine systems via T-S model

This paper presents a new approach to active sensor fault tolerant tracking control (FTTC) for offshore wind turbine (OWT) described via Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) multiple models. The FTTC strategy is designed in such way that aims to maintain nominal wind turbine controller without any change in both fault and fault-free cases. This is achieved by inserting T–S proportional state estimators augmented with proportional and integral feedback (PPI) fault estimators to be capable to estimate different generators and rotor speed sensors fault for compensation purposes. Due to the dependency of the FTTC strategy on the fault estimation the designed observer has the capability to estimate a wide range of time varying fault signals. Moreover, the robustness of the observer against the difference between the anemometer wind speed measurement and the immeasurable effective wind speed signal has been taken into account. The corrected measurements fed to a T–S fuzzy dynamic output feedback controller (TSDOFC) designed to track the desired trajectory. The stability proof with H∞ performance and D-stability constraints is formulated as a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) problem. The strategy is illustrated using a non-linear benchmark system model of a wind turbine offered within a competition led by the companies Mathworks and KK-Electronic

Adaptive Signal Processing Strategy for a Wind Farm System Fault Accommodation

In order to improve the availability of offshore wind farms, thus avoiding unplanned operation and maintenance costs, which can be high for offshore installations, the accommodation of faults in their earlier occurrence is fundamental. This paper addresses the design of an active fault tolerant control scheme that is applied to a wind park benchmark of nine wind turbines, based on their nonlinear models, as well as the wind and interactions between the wind turbines in the wind farm. Note that, due to the structure of the system and its control strategy, it can be considered as a fault tolerant cooperative control problem of an autonomous plant. The controller accommodation scheme provides the on-line estimate of the fault signals generated by nonlinear filters exploiting the nonlinear geometric approach to obtain estimates decoupled from both model uncertainty and the interactions among the turbines. This paper proposes also a data-driven approach to provide these disturbance terms in analytical forms, which are subsequently used for designing the nonlinear filters for fault estimation. This feature of the work, followed by the simpler solution relying on a data-driven approach, can represent the key point when on-line implementations are considered for a viable application of the proposed scheme

Modeling and Lyapunov-designed based on adaptive gain sliding mode control for wind turbines

In this paper, modeling and the Lyapunov-designed control approach are studied for the Wind Energy Conversion Systems (WECS). The objective of this study is to ensure the maximum energy production of a WECS while reducing the mechanical stress on the shafts (turbine and generator). Furthermore, the proposed control strategy aims to optimize the wind energy captured by the wind turbine operating under rating wind speed, using an Adaptive Gain Sliding Mode Control (AG-SMC). The adaptation for the sliding gain and the torque estimation are carried out using the sliding surface as an improved solution that handles the conventional sliding mode control. Furthermore, the resultant WECS control policy is relatively simple, meaning the online computational cost and time are considerably reduced. Time-domain simulation studies are performed to discuss the effectiveness of the proposed control strateg

Nonlinear Dual-Mode Control of Variable-Speed Wind Turbines with Doubly Fed Induction Generators

This paper presents a feedback/feedforward nonlinear controller for variable-speed wind turbines with doubly fed induction generators. By appropriately adjusting the rotor voltages and the blade pitch angle, the controller simultaneously enables: (a) control of the active power in both the maximum power tracking and power regulation modes, (b) seamless switching between the two modes, and (c) control of the reactive power so that a desirable power factor is maintained. Unlike many existing designs, the controller is developed based on original, nonlinear, electromechanically-coupled models of wind turbines, without attempting approximate linearization. Its development consists of three steps: (i) employ feedback linearization to exactly cancel some of the nonlinearities and perform arbitrary pole placement, (ii) design a speed controller that makes the rotor angular velocity track a desired reference whenever possible, and (iii) introduce a Lyapunov-like function and present a gradient-based approach for minimizing this function. The effectiveness of the controller is demonstrated through simulation of a wind turbine operating under several scenarios.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technolog

Wind turbine condition monitoring strategy through multiway PCA and multivariate inference

This article states a condition monitoring strategy for wind turbines using a statistical data-driven modeling approach by means of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data. Initially, a baseline data-based model is obtained from the healthy wind turbine by means of multiway principal component analysis (MPCA). Then, when the wind turbine is monitorized, new data is acquired and projected into the baseline MPCA model space. The acquired SCADA data are treated as a random process given the random nature of the turbulent wind. The objective is to decide if the multivariate distribution that is obtained from the wind turbine to be analyzed (healthy or not) is related to the baseline one. To achieve this goal, a test for the equality of population means is performed. Finally, the results of the test can determine that the hypothesis is rejected (and the wind turbine is faulty) or that there is no evidence to suggest that the two means are different, so the wind turbine can be considered as healthy. The methodology is evaluated on a wind turbine fault detection benchmark that uses a 5 MW high-fidelity wind turbine model and a set of eight realistic fault scenarios. It is noteworthy that the results, for the presented methodology, show that for a wide range of significance, a in [1%, 13%], the percentage of correct decisions is kept at 100%; thus it is a promising tool for real-time wind turbine condition monitoring.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Pitch Control of Wind Turbine through PID, Fuzzy and adaptive Fuzzy-PID controllers

As the penetration of the wind energy into the electrical power grid is extensively increased, the influence of the wind turbine systems on the frequency and voltage stability becomes more and more significant. Wind turbine rotor bears different types of loads; aerodynamic loads, gravitational loads and centrifugal loads. These loads cause fatigue and vibration in blades, which cause degradation to the rotor blades. These loads can be overcome and the amount of collected power can be controlled using a good pitch controller (PC) which will tune the attack angle of a wind turbine rotor blade into or out of the wind. Each blade is exposed to different loads due to the variation of the wind speed across the rotor blades. For this reason, individual electric drives can be used in future to control the pitch of the blades in a process called Individual Pitch Control. In this thesis work, an enhanced pitch angle control strategy based on fuzzy logic control is proposed to cope with the nonlinear characteristics of wind turbine as well as to reduce the loads on the blades. A mathematical model of wind turbine (pitch control system) is developed and is tested with three controllers -PID, Fuzzy, and Adaptive Fuzzy-PID. After comparing all the three proposed strategies, the simulation results show that the Adaptive Fuzzy-PID controller has the best performance as it regulates the pitch system as well as the disturbances and uncertain factors associated with the system

Active actuator fault-tolerant control of a wind turbine benchmark model

This paper describes the design of an active fault-tolerant control scheme that is applied to the actuator of a wind turbine benchmark. The methodology is based on adaptive filters obtained via the nonlinear geometric approach, which allows to obtain interesting decoupling property with respect to uncertainty affecting the wind turbine system. The controller accommodation scheme exploits the on-line estimate of the actuator fault signal generated by the adaptive filters. The nonlinearity of the wind turbine model is described by the mapping to the power conversion ratio from tip-speed ratio and blade pitch angles. This mapping represents the aerodynamic uncertainty, and usually is not known in analytical form, but in general represented by approximated two-dimensional maps (i.e. look-up tables). Therefore, this paper suggests a scheme to estimate this power conversion ratio in an analytical form by means of a two-dimensional polynomial, which is subsequently used for designing the active fault-tolerant control scheme. The wind turbine power generating unit of a grid is considered as a benchmark to show the design procedure, including the aspects of the nonlinear disturbance decoupling method, as well as the viability of the proposed approach. Extensive simulations of the benchmark process are practical tools for assessing experimentally the features of the developed actuator fault-tolerant control scheme, in the presence of modelling and measurement errors. Comparisons with different fault-tolerant schemes serve to highlight the advantages and drawbacks of the proposed methodology

H-infinity Variable-Pitch Control for Wind Turbines Based on Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Theory

When the wind speed is above the rated value, the output power of the wind turbine should be maintained at the rated value in order to prevent the power generation system from overheating. In addition, the natural wind speed will fluctuate randomly in a large range of values, making the traditional control effect not ideal. This paper presents a novel H-infinity (H∞) pitch control strategy for Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs), which can make the rotor speed and output power constant when the wind speed changes in a large range. In order to shorten response time and reduce overshoot, in the specific solution, the control method combines the H∞ theory and the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy theory. Firstly, the linearized models of several operating points were obtained with the T-S fuzzy theory. Then, a robust controller was designed for each linear sub-system based on the H∞ control theory. Furthermore, the controllers of the sub-systems were superimposed into a global controller for the entire system through the membership function. Finally, modeling and simulation were carried out in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The simulation results show that when the wind speed changes above the rated speed, the rotor speed can be maintained at the rated value, and the output power also can be maintained at the rated value. Compared with the optimal control, the response speed of this method is faster and the overshoot is smaller. It provides a new idea for the pitch angle control of wind turbine