Wind turbine synchronous reset pitch control

Abstract

Reset controllers are commonly used to smooth the transient response of systems. We use this technique to improve a standard baseline pitch controller for offshore wind turbines (WTs). The introduction of this strategy enhances the overall performance of the WT. In particular, the fore-aft and side-to-side accelerations of the WT tower are significantly reduced, whilst a steadier power output is obtained, in comparison to the standard baseline pitch controller. Furthermore, our designed pitch control’s main advantage, with respect to the baseline, is its ease of implementation and reduced complexity as it does not require a gain-scheduling technique, nor pitch position measurement (thus, it is insensitive to pitch sensor faults). The proposed approach has been simulated on the NREL 5-MW prototype offshore turbine model, mounted on a jacket support. The simulations are carried out using the aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulator FAST, and key observations are thoroughly discussed.