An Update to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Baseline Wind Turbine Controller

Abstract

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's 5-MW wind turbine model is well established as an industry standard and is often used as a comparison model, or a model on which to build upon. Though effective, the legacy controller for the 5-MW wind turbine uses a simple algorithm that is not up to date with many industry standards. Additionally, as the research community has advanced into fast-paced development cycles, as systems engineering tools such as Wind-Plant Integrated System Design & Engineering Model (WISDEM ®) [1] are employed, and as a greater focus on controls co-design practices is encouraged, demand for a generic wind turbine controller has arisen. This work presents updates for the NREL 5-MW controller to a more modern control architecture, and establishes a generic tuning framework that can be easily adapted to various wind turbines. Based on initial results, the updated generic controller eases the automatic tuning process while maintaining or improving the performance of the legacy NREL 5-MW controller.