Iterative feedback tuning of wind turbine controllers

Abstract

Traditionally, wind turbine controllers are designed using first principles or linearized or identified models. The aim of this paper is to show that with an automated, online, and model-free tuning strategy, wind turbine control performance can be significantly increased. For this purpose, iterative feedback tuning (IFT) is applied to two different turbine controllers: Drivetrain damping and collective pitch control. The results, obtained by high-fidelity simulations using the NREL 5MW wind turbine, indicate significant performance improvements over baseline controllers, which were designed using classical loop-shaping techniques. It is concluded that iterative feedback tuning of turbine controllers has the potential to become a valuable tool to improve wind turbine performance.