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WLYD TURBL\€ WODELLISG XSD CONTROL

WE LrithcaF S A de la Salk,D Reardon, M J Grimble

Lrn~erur)of Suathclyde. UK

ISTRODLCTION by alleviating these loads but the reverse does not


necessarily hold.
The wind turbines discussed in this paper are upwind
horizontal axis, grid-connected medium to large scale wind There are two further purposes for active pitch
turbines, Fig. 1. The configuration of wind turbine is control, Leithead et. al(5). Firstly, the control system
the simplest possible comprising a three-blade rotor with should ensure that there is sufficient damping of the wind
rigid hub, gearbox and induction generator. The turbine power-train dynamics. Wind turbine dynamics are
generator is connected directly to the grid thereby inclined to be lightly damped. If it were not so, energy
locking the speed of rotation of the rotor to the frequency which has been captured by the wind turbine would be
of the grid which is of course fixed. For this reason this wastefully dissipated. It is also important that the
type of machine is called a constant speed wind turbine. bandwidth of the power-train dynamics is set at an
appropriate frequency by the controller design. (The
As the wind speed increases the energy available for criterion for the choice of bandwidth are considered
capture increases as roughly the cube of the windspeed. later). Secondly, the energy capture should be
The high wind speeds are not encountered frequently maximised.
enough to make it economic to extract the total
energy available. Aerodynamic power limiting is The role of the control system is summarised by the
preferred. At a predetemuned, windspeed (rated following general goals Leithead, et. a1 (I), (5).
windspeed) the power input to the wind turbine will have
reached the limit for continuous operation (rated power). Alleviate the load transients throughout the wind
When the windspeed exceeds rated the excess power in the turbine.
wind must be discarded by the rotor to prevent the *
turbine overloading. The power is maintained at its rated Regulate and smooth the power generated.
value until a maximum windspeed is reached when the
turbine is shut-down (cut-out windspeed). A typical Cause the power train to have the appropriate
power curve is also shown in Fig. 1. dynamics, i.e. damping factor and bandwidth.

There are two common methods of aerodynamic power


limiting. The first is passive regulation. The rotor
- Maximise the energy capture.

blades are designed to stall near rated windspeed. Hence, The load transients experienced by the wind turbine
the power generated by the turbine does not rise further are of two types. Firstly, there are the variations in the
with windspeed. The second is active regulation. The net aerodynamic driving torque induced in the rotor.
torque induced on the rotor by the wind depends on the These propagate down the power-train and affect
pitch angle of the blades. Hence, the torque may be components such as the gearbox. The control system
reduced by feathering the blades and vice versa. During should attempt to reduce these to a minimum to reduce
active regulation, above rated windspeed, the pitch of the stress on the components. Secondly, there are the
blades are continuously set to the angle of pitch at which variations in the structural loads. If the control system
rated power is generated. The adjustment of pitch angle operates perfectly then the turbine structural states,
is usually made in response to power measurement. The would track the steady state values. The loads the
whole of the blades may be pitched - full-span pitch turbine experiences under these conditions are the
on-design loads about which the control system can do
regulation - or only the tips may be pitched - part-span little. Of course the control system does not perform
(or tip) pitch regulation. perfectly and the wind turbine experiences additional
transient structural loads - the so-called off-design loads.
The capability to vary the pitch angle of the blades The controller should attempt to reduce these to a
may be exploited to achieve much more than simply limiting minimum also.
the level of generation of power. The purpose of this
paper is to report on an extensive investigation into the REVIEW OF WIND TURBINE CONTROL
active control of constant speed wind turbines, Leithead
et ul, (l), (2). (3) and (4). Complementary to the task of identifying the role of
control, a thorough review of wind turbine control was
CONTROL DESIGN OBJECTIVES conducted, de la Salle et. a l ( 6 ) . A surprising
number of publications and reports (approximately 100).
Active pitch control has been widely used to smooth both academic and industrial were located. The
the power generated by the wind turbine when operating conclusions reached are summarised below.
above rated windspeed. However, this is not an
adequate criterion on its own. Since no fuel costs are The turbine is a dynamical system excited by
entailed in the generation of power from the wind, the disturbance inputs due to windspeed variation and
only costs are the initial capital costs and the maintenance measurement noise. The windspeed induced
costs and it is important for the cost-effectiveness of wind disturbances are caused by wind shear (the
power to maximise its working life by reducing the rate of increase in windspeed with height), tower shadow
fatiguing of the wind turbine components. The real and rotational sampling of the windfield as well as
purpose for pitch control should not be to smooth the the time variation of the windspeed as described
power but to alleviate the load transients throughout the by the point windspeed spectrum. The latter may
wind turbine in order to reduce the extent of fatigue be considered to consist of two components. A
damage, Leithead et. al(5). Smooth power will be achieved slowly varying component which can be
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interpreted as the hourly mean windspeed and a the mean pitch angle of the blade to alter to maintain the
rapidly varying component which may be mean power output at its rated value. These mean blade
interpreted as the windspeed turbulence variation positions are mated as steady state opfxathg points
about the mean windspeed. Characteristic of the when considered from the fast turbulent time scale. It is
latter are gusts whereby the windspeed increases assumed during the control design, that the mean
steadily over a relatively long period such as ten windpseed changes are treated as a slow disturbance
seconds or more. The measurement process inevitably which is rejected by the control system. The control
introduces random disturbances into the system with a model corresponds to a linearisation about the operating
characteristically wide specuum. The majority of point for a mean windspeed of 15.7 d s . The control
reported designs do not account adequately for all system is a SISO system with the output chosen to be
these disturbances. generator reaction torque. The variables are defined as
follows:
The industrial standard control system for constant
speed wind turbines is PI control action on a reference value for electrical toque
measurement of electrical power. The relevance of generator reaction toque
much of the work in PI control reviewed was measured electrical torque
hampered by the lack of an adequate identification demndpitch a n g e
of the purpose of the control systems. aerodynamic driving torque
aerodynamic toque @re-induction lag)
* There was no clear statement of the control 'pa actual pitch angle
objectives in the literature. Consequently,
assessment of controller p e r f o m is difficult.
q,91and q11 zero
one
mean white noise with intensity

No thorough investigation of the control problem The symbol 6 denotes that only small changes in the
has been completed. However, the dependence of variables from their steady state operating condition are
the dynamic behaviour on control and the potential being considered. ' h e dynamic blocks are described
improvement in performance by good control are below.
demonstrated in many of the publications.
C Controller
It was apparent from the review of wind turbine
control that there was a need to design control systems for The controller and the critical aspects of its design are
wind turbines, to meet the design goals previously discussed in Section 5 .
stated, to assess their performance and assess
the implications for the cost-effectiveness of wind power.
A Actuator
WIND TURBINE SYSTEMS
The actuator is nonlinear with saturation limits on both
l h e dynamics of a pitch regulated wind turbine are pitch rate and acceleration which are easily reached. (In
depicted in Fig. 2. The set of interlinked dynamics are fact on some commercial wind turbines the actuator
the suuctural dynamics, the aerodynamics, the drive-train appears to be saturated much of the time). This
dynamics, (ie. the mechanical dynamics of the power saturation is caused by high frepuency components of the
train), the power generation dynamics, (the elecmcal disturbance spectrum, viz. measurement noise and
dynamics of the power train) the power transducer spectral peaks at integer multiples. of the rotational speed
dynamics, the control dynamics and the actuator of the rotor, especially at la and 3C+ The l a m are
dynamics. All aspects of the plant dynamics can be caused by the blades sampling the wmdfield as the rotor
significant at low frequencies (less than 1 Hz) within the rotates. The actuator transfer function is
frequency range excited by the windspeed turbulence
specuum. In addition, the aerodynamics and the actuator A=LLL%.
dynamics are significantly non-linear. (s+ 25.9)
K and Aerodynamic Gains
A detailed nonlinear simulation was constructed and
thoroughly validated for a wind turbine Leithead et al(2), K and K are the rates of change of aerodynamic
(7) with the following characteristics: torqut8with pizh and windspeed respectively, at the
operating point about which the system is linearised.
Rotor Radius IR? 15m These gains are essentially a steady state representation
Number of blades LnJ 3 of the rather complex aerodynamics of the mtor and as
Gearbox ratio [N] 38.06 such have a considerable degree of un-nty with
Nominal turbine rotor s p e d
Rated aeordynamic driving torque
Kited electrical power
[;sf',
.Clj 4.187 rad/s
80.7 kNm
300 kW
which the control system must cope. and K change
rapidly, by an order of magnitude or m k as th:
Rated windpseed
Bus angular frequency
q-214.159rad/s
!@f.
124s
windspeed varies. For simplicity only the overall gain of
the controller should be varied as the windspeed varies.
The values at the design operating point are:
Above rated windspeed the turbine uses active pitch
control with the power output regulated to be 300 kW.
Although the wind turbine is fictitous it is an amalgamation
of parameter values and component subsystems from actual
wind turbines in the 300 kW range. It is based on WT Turbulent Wind Disturbances
information obtained from the literature, de la Salle et cll
(6). and from industrial sources. Leithead et. al W shapes the white noise input, WI. to generate
(2). a distugance with the same specuum as the wind
turbulence experienced by the wind turbine. The shaping
The control model. Leithead el. a1 (2) is consists of two parts. Firstly, the point windspeed
depicted in Fig. 3. It was derived by a combination of specuum is approximated by a first order system.
analytic and simulation studies. The control problem is Secondly, since the wind turbine experiences at any time
conveniently divided into two time scales corresponding to the average of windspeed over the rotor disc, the point
slow mean windspeed changes and rapid turbulent spectrum is shaped by a second order filter. The
windspeed variations. Changes in mean windspeed cause
3

transfer function for WT is Steady Increases or Decreases in Windspeed


1.37 1 4 . 8 6 s Wind turbines are frequently subject to variations in
wT = ( ~ 4 . 0 8 6 )1+O.&ls;( 1+ I . a s ) windspeed which may be characterised as changes in the
mean windspeed or steady increases or decreases in mean
W30 Rotational Sampling Disturbance windspeed, i.e. steps or ramps. Of course any steady
state errors should be kept to a minimum. To cope with
The windfield through which the blades sweep is these the open-loop transfer must behave l i e k/s(s+a) at
rather complex with windspeed variations due to wind low frequency with a small. The U s causes the
shear, tower shadow and turbulence. The windspeed steady state error in response to a change in mean
varies both with position and time. Consequently, the windspeed to be zero. Since a is small, the low
disturbance spectrum has strong peaks at nn. The most frequency asymptote for the open-loop Bode plot
important for a three-blade machine are IC2 and 3C2 peaks intercepts the OdB axis at high frequency and ensures the
with the 3R peak much more pronounced than the 1R peak velocity error constant is large. Hence, the steady state
W shapes the white noise input, qI to generate a errors in response to steady increases or decreases in the
dibtrbance whose specuum is just suck a peak at 3C2. The windspeed are small.
transfer function for WgO is
Switching from Below to Above Rated Windspeed
7.35x103(s+12.66) Active pitch control of the wind turbine is only
w3w = ( s2+3s +160.2) operated when the windspeed is above rated. When the
windspeed rises rapidly from below to above rated
I Induction Lag aindspeed, the control system must start to operate in a
smooth manner with no initial overshoot of rated torque.
The forces experienced by a wind turbine are not due Unfortunately, there is a low frequency pole in the
to the local windspeed alone. The force depends on the controller transfer function, namely the pole at -a
state of the wind both upstream and downstream for the which was introduced to induce the correct steady state
wind turbine by as much as ten machine diameters. If the error behaviour. On starting control action, this low
pitch angle is changed it takes some time for the wind frequency pole causes transients which are relatively slow
state to adjust in the appropriate way. During this time, to decay and which cause the pitch angle to be
the forces are much greater than might be expected. The inappropriately set with a large transient overshoot in
same effect is experienced during a change in windspeed. rotor torque. This is not acceptable since the windspeed
The transfer function for I is frequently traverse from below to above rated and vice
versa. The remedy is to introduce a minor feedback loop
1 + 11.25s) as shown in Fig. 5 which switches in and permits the
I = ;I + 7. 5s) controller to continue operating below rated windspeed.
The minor feedback loop mimics the action of the physical
D Power Train
wind turbine through the inclusion of a transfer function
The power-train is the combined dynamics of the which models it dynamics (denoted as P i n Fig. 3). By
rotor, the low speed shaft. the gearbox, the high speed designing the controller, C, such that
shaft and generator. It is characterised by two lightly c = P*C’
damped resonances. The first is due mainly to the
mechanical dynamics of the system. The second is due where P* may be interpreted as the inverse of the plant
mainly to the elecmcal dynamics of the system. Both are dynamics, P allows the simpler realisation depicted in
lightly damped since energy should not be dissipated Fig. 4. An important feature of Fig. 4 is the absence of
unnecessarily. The transfer function for D is any dynamics in the minor feedback loop. The switch is
triggered in response to the pitch demand of the controller
D= 2123.38 traversing 0 degrees. Any dynamics in the minor feedback
(s4+33.39s3+7566. 13s2+6421 .3s+809OO) loop would inject transients into the controller when the
minor feedback loop is switched in. These transients
themselves can cause the switching to be activated and the
T Measurement Transducer system can become unstable. d is the part of the
complete controller, C, which caters for the input
The normal measurement made on the wind turbine is dynamics and P caters for the plant dynamics. C’
power. However, since the speed of rotation of the contains the terms Ws(s+a) introduced previously.
turbine varies by much less than 1%it may be interpreted
as a measure of the generator reaction torque. The Nonlinear Control Gain
transfer function for T is
Since the aerodynamic gain undergoes large and rapid
T
=
, changes, it is necessary to include a nonlinear gain in the
(1 + 0.02s) controller. The performance of the controller varies
depending on where the gain is positioned relative to the
M Measurement Noise Intensity controller dynamic terms. Its position is thus important.
However, because the nonlinear aspects of the system are
Measurement noise is modelled by white noise, 011 the determining factor, the best choice of position can
scaled by the gain M. It is chosen to correspond to an only be found by extensive simulation based
observed uncertainty with standard deviation of 300 W in investigations, that is hial and error. The best position
power measurement logged at 10 Hz. The gain M is for the nonlinear gain is after all the controller dynamic
except for the l/s, introduced to induce the correct
M=l steady state errors, which comes last. Ideally the
nonlinear gain would be a function of windspeed.
DESIGN OF THE CONTROLLER Unfortunately, it is not possible to measure the
windspeed. The reason is that it is the overall windfield
The design of the controller is outlined in this section. over the rotor disc including the upstream and
It is described in detail elsewhere, Leithead ef al(2). downstream behaviour which determines the effective
The following aspects were important to the design. windspeed experienced by the wind turbine. However, if
4

the controller is performing adequately the blade pitch loads, increases. But if it becomes too high, the
angle is a measure of this effective windspeed and the controller becomes too active and is dominated by
nonlinear gain is parametensed by the pitch angle. The measurementnoise. In addition, two active control
final structure of the controllv is depicted in Fig. 6 causes stress to the root of the blades when full-span
where S1(s) is sC', S2(s) is P and K((PA)is the pitch control is used. The choice of crossover frequency
nonlinear gain. (A is the actuator). is mainly determined by the structure of the windspeed
disturbance spectrum. Since the three blades are
The design aspects discussed above are the most constrained to move in unison, it is not possible for the
important for optimising the design of the control system. control system to
None of them are, or can be incorporated, in the linear reduce the transient loads induced by the rotationally
control model, Fig. 3. Classical control is, thus, thought sampled peaks in the disturbance spectrum. However, the
to be the most appropriate design method, rather than an controller must not enhance these transient loads whilst
optimal control method which optimises the linear system at reducing the transient loads induced by wind turbulence.
an operating point. Classical control which is the most The frequencies of the latter are less than In. To reduce
transp?rent, enables engineering intuition to be. exploited windspeed turbulence loads while not enhancing the
in obmning a solution to the control design task. Some. spectral peaks at 1 0 and 3a, requires the crossover
furrher aspects are described below. frequency to be selected such that the positive section of
the sensitivity function is placed between the spectral
Robustness peaks. This implies the crossover frequency is just below
1R.
Naturally, the control design must be robust to plant
uncertainty. Of all the dynamics of the system, the most Prevention of Actuator Saturation
accurately known are the power-train dynamics, D. The
mechanical contribution to D is straightforwardto obtain, The limits on the actuation system are tight since the
in principle. The electrical contribution is not so easy to blades on the wind turbine have considerable inertia and it
determine. It is highly unusual to require to m@el the is necessary not to over suess the blade roots by
dynamics of a generator subject to a stochastic "put
(Normally. the source of power is tightly controlled in a excessive control action. The actuator is therefore, prone
conventional power plant). However, since the generator to saturation from high frequency disturbances.
is gridconnected, it has all the power in the grid to call Unfortunately, the disturbance spccbum contains spectral
on to keep the rotor speed of the turbine fixed. This is peaks and measurement noise. components at high
the source of the rapid and large torque transients and frequency. In addition, the fust drive-train mode has a
power swings experienced by the turbine in response to destabilising influence on the control system. since it
changing windspeed. It is not uncommon for the torque to causes a significant phase lag at low frequencies. It is
double in one or two seconds. Although the electrical countered by the controller introducing a degree of phase
dynamics are not well understood, thc grid-connection of lead which in turn increases the gain of the controller at
the generator acts like a very strong feedback loop high frequency and accentuates the tendency of the
enclosing the g e n a t o r . The net effect is that the actuator to saturate. The remedy is to shape the
generator dynamics are simplified and the uncertainty controller at high frequency to reduce the gain as rapidly
removed. A large amount of uncertainty is associated as possible.
with the aerodynamicswhich are nonlinear and ASSESSMENT OF PERFORMANCE
dispibuted. The representation by the aerodynamic
Since it is the industrial standard, a PI controller was
also designed for the fictitious wind turbine. Its transfer
function is
= 8.7~1O-~(s+lO)
S
It is adjusted for other mean windspeeds by the same
scaling factor as the previous controller.

A controller was designed for the fictitious wind Both controller designs were implemented on the wind
turbine in line with the foregoing comments. To meet the turbine simulation and the performance was in agreement
requirements on steady state error and crossover with the theoretical assessment. The performancefor a
frequency and to induce satisfactory phase and gain means w i n d p d of 12 m/s is shown in Wg. 5 which
margins, the C term of the control system is compares the aerodynamictorque induced with each
controller. The classically designed controller is
c'= 17(s2+2.0s+2. 11) perceived to perform bettez than the PI controller.
s( s+O. 16)(s+3.25)2
Although the benefits have only been demonstrated
To meet the requirements on rapid roll-off at high for a simulation of the wind turbine and some degradation
frequency and to countgr the phase lag of the first must be expected in actual implementation on a real
drive-train mode, the P term of the controkr is machine, the performanceof the classical controller
should still be a marked improvementover the PI
p* = 12. l(s2+0. 8064s+10.745)( s+25.9) controller. If the potential benefits can be demonstrated
(s2+36. 245~+670.27Xs2+56s +16ooJ in practice then improving the performance of the control
system of wind turbines will improve the cost-
This controller is designed specifically for a mean effectiveness of wind power. A classically designed
windspeed of 15.7 m/s with a sim le scaling factor, K(cpa), controller is currently being implemented on a 300 kW
used to modify the control gains P,r other mean wind turbine and field trials will follow.
windspeds. No anempt is made to optimise the controller
for each mean windspeed individually. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Choice of Crossover Frequency
The authors wish to thank the UK Dept. of Energy for
An important parameter for the control system is the funding the work and by whose permission this paper is
crossover frequency. As the crossover frequency published. The cooperation and information supplied by
increases the ability of the control system, to reduce the WEG plc and James Howden Ltd is also gratefully
drive-train transient loads and the off-design smctural acknowledged.
b

REXRES'CES

: ".E.
L-i*M. de I3 Salle, S.A. Reardon, D. Grimble,
MJ.. 1358. H.ind control qstemr modelling and
dcsinn. L-mersit) of Strathclyde, Report prepared
icr kp!of Energy.
: Leithead. W.E., de la Salle, S.A., Reardon, D., 1990,
Application of classical control to a wind turbine,
L-niversityof Strathclyde. Report prepared for Dept.
of Energy.
3. Leithead, W.E., de la Salle, S.A., Reardon, D., 1990,
Classical control of a pitch control system,
Proceedings 12th BWEA Wind Energy Conference,
Norwich, UK.
4. Leithead, W.E., de la Salle, S.A., Reardon, D., 1990,
Wind turbine control objectives and design,
Proceedings ECWEC, Madrid, Spain.
5. Leithead, W.E., de la Salk, S.A., Reardon, D., 1991,
Role and objectives of control for wind turbine,
Accepted for Publication, E E Proceedings-C.
6. delaSalle S.A. Reardon D. Leithead W.E.
Grimble, M.J., 1'990, A rehe; of wind iurbine'
control, Int. J. of Control.52, 1295-1310.

7. Leithead, W.E., de la Salle, S.A.. Reardon D., 1990,


Wind turbine modelling and control, Univkrsity
of Snathclyde. Report prepared for Dept. of Energy.

Figure 2 Wind turbine dynamics.

ELLE CONTAINING
REOXANDGENERATOR

El
-

- - -.

1
RATE0 - - ~ -~~

Figure 1 Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Figure 3 Wind turbine control model.
with typical power curve.
6

PITCH ANGLE

#a

Figure 4 Structure of Classical conaoller

Figure 5 Comparativeperformance of PI and


Classical control of wind turbine.

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