Maximizing wind farm power output with the helix approach: Experimental validation and wake analysis using tomographic particle image velocimetry

Wind farm control can play a key role in reducing the negative impact of wakes on wind turbine power production. The helix approach is a recent innovation in the field of wind farm control, which employs individual blade pitch control to induce a helical velocity profile in a wind turbine wake. This forced meandering of the wake has turned...

Convex economic model predictive control for blade loads mitigation on wind turbines

Economic model predictive control (EMPC) has received increasing attention in the wind energy community due to its ability to trade-off economic objectives with ease. However, for wind turbine applications, inherent nonlinearities, such as from aerodynamics, pose difficulties in attaining a convex optimal control problem (OCP), by which real...

On the Load Impact of the Helix Approach on Offshore Wind Turbines: Quantifying and analyzing the fatigue load impact of the helix approach on offshore wind turbine components.

To accelerate the growth of offshore wind power, its Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE) must be reduced. A means of reducing the LCOE of offshore wind power is by mitigating the adverse wake effect by employing Wind Farm Control (WFC) for power maximization. A recent WFC technology is the helix approach, which uses Individual Pitch Control (IPC) to...

On the load impact of dynamic wind farm wake mixing strategies

In recent studies, the effectiveness of different so-called wake mixing strategies has been assessed in terms of wind farm power maximization. These studies show that by dynamically varying the pitch angles of a wind turbine, wake mixing can be enhanced to increase the overall power production of a wind farm. However, such strategies also...

Towards Convex Economic Model Predictive Individual Pitch Control for Wind Turbine Load Mitigation

Wind turbines offer an appealing method for power generation. In the fight against global warming wind energy helps realise green house gas emission reduction targets. Moreover, given a globally increasing demand for energy, the role of wind energy is set to become even more important. Historically, the cost of wind energy has decreased...

Pitch control for wind turbine load mitigation and enhanced wake mixing: A simulation and experimental validation study

The dissertation discusses different wind turbine control strategies that use pitch actuation to decrease the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) of wind farms. This is achieved by either mitigating the loads experienced by individual turbines, or by enhancing wake mixing in turbines located within a wind farm. The latter strategy exploits the fact...

Fault-tolerant individual pitch control of floating offshore wind turbines via subspace predictive repetitive control

Individual pitch control (IPC) is an effective and widely used strategy to mitigate blade loads in wind turbines. However, conventional IPC fails to cope with blade and actuator faults, and this situation may lead to an emergency shutdown and increased maintenance costs. In this paper, a fault-tolerant individual pitch control (FTIPC) scheme...

Wind turbine control: Advances for load mitigations and hydraulic drivetrains

In the last decades, tremendous efforts have been put in advancements of wind turbine technology by scientific research and industrial developments. One of the focal areas has been the upscaling of turbines to increase power capacity. However, by enlarging turbine sizes, the square-cube law dictates rising costs per unit of power capacity. To...

The helix approach: Using dynamic individual pitch control to enhance wake mixing in wind farms

Wind farm control using dynamic concepts is a research topic that is receiving an increasing amount of interest. The main concept of this approach is that dynamic variations of the wind turbine control settings lead to higher wake turbulence, and subsequently faster wake recovery due to increased mixing. As a result, downstream turbines...

Active Tip Deflection Control For Wind Turbines

This thesis presents an individual tip control (IPC) system based on blade tip deflection measurements. The controller is based on novel sensor inputs which measure flapwise tip deflection distance at a high sampling rate. IPC plays a key role in reducing fatigue loads in wind turbine components. These fatigue loads are caused by differential...

On the effects of an azimuth offset in the MBC-transformation used by IPC for wind turbine fatigue load reductions

<br/>Wind energy currently is one of the most attractive solutions to help in the goal of switching to a more sustainable way of energy production. To stay competitive with other forms of energy production, the reduction of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) is an important indicator. One way of achieving this goal is by increasing the size of...

Data-driven repetitive control: Wind tunnel experiments under turbulent conditions

A commonly applied method to reduce the cost of wind energy, is alleviating the periodic loads on turbine blades using Individual Pitch Control (IPC). In this paper, a data-driven IPC methodology called Subspace Predictive Repetitive Control (SPRC) is employed. The effectiveness of SPRC will be demonstrated on a scaled 2-bladed wind turbine....

Analysis and optimal individual pitch control decoupling by inclusion of an azimuth offset in the multiblade coordinate transformation

With the trend of increasing wind turbine rotor diameters, the mitigation of blade fatigue loadings is of special interest to extend the turbine lifetime. Fatigue load reductions can be partly accomplished using individual pitch control (IPC) facilitated by the so-called multiblade coordinate (MBC) transformation. This operation transforms...

Iterative data-driven load control for flexible wind turbine rotors

Wind energy has reached a high degree ofmaturity: for wind-rich onshore locations, it is already competitive with conventional energy sources. However, for low-wind, remote and offshore regions, research efforts are still required to enhance its economic viability. While it is possible to reduce the cost of energy by upscaling wind turbines, it...

Iterative feedback tuning of feedforward IPC for two-bladed wind turbines: A comparison with conventional IPC

The development of sustainable energy production methods is an important aspect in lowering the emission of greenhouse gases and exhaustion of fossil fuels. Wind energy is recognized globally as one of the most promising sustainable forms of electricity generation, but the cost of offshore wind energy does not meet the level of fossil-based...

Towards Data-Driven Control for Modern Wind Turbines

Further developments in data-driven control techniques for the load reduction of modern wind turbines can achieve an increased lifetime of components and make the scaling to larger rotor diameters possible, and therefore improve the cost effectiveness of modern wind turbines. Also the success of future rotor designs will heavily depend for their...

Fault tolerant wind turbine production operation and shutdown (Sustainable Control)

Extreme environmental conditions as well as system failure are real-life phenomena. Especially offshore, extreme environmental conditions and system faults are to be dealt with in an effective way. The project Sustainable Control, a new approach to operate wind turbines (Agentschap NL, grant EOSLT02013) pro- vides the concepts for an integrated...