Design of Power and Load Reduction Controller for a Medium-Capacity Wind Turbine

A control algorithm for a 100 kW wind turbine is designed in this study. The wind turbine is operating as a variable speed variable pitch (VSVP) status. Also, this wind turbine is a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) Type. For the medium capacity wind turbine considered in this study, it was found that the optimum tip speed ratios to achieve the maximum power coefficients varied with wind speeds. Therefore a commercial blade element momentum theory and multi-body dynamics based program was implemented to consider the variation of aerodynamic coefficients with respect to Reynolds numbers and to find out the power and thrust coefficients with respect tip speed ratio and blade pitch angles. In the end a basic power controller was designed for below rated, transition and above rated regions, and a load reduction algorithm was designed to reduce tower vibration by the nacelle motion. As a result, damage equivalent Load (DEL) of tower fore-aft has been reduced by 32%. From dynamic simulations in the commercial program, the controller was found to work properly as designed. Experimental validation of the control algorithm will be done in the future.