Development of hardware-in-the-loop-simulation testbed for pitch control system performance test

Abstract

This paper deals with the development of a wind turbine pitch control system and the construction of a Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulation (HILS) testbed for the performance test of the pitch control system. When the wind speed exceeds the rated wind speed, the wind turbine pitch controller adjusts the blade pitch angles collectively to ensure that the rotor speed maintains the rated rotor speed. The pitch controller with the individual pitch control function can add individual pitch angles into the collective pitch angles to reduce the mechanical load applied to the blade periodically due to wind shear. Large wind turbines often experience mechanical loads caused by wind shear phenomena. To verify the performance of the pitch control system before applying it to an actual wind turbine, the pitch control system is tested on the HILS testbed, which acts like an actual wind turbine system. The testbed for evaluating the developed pitch control system consists of the pitch control system, a real-time unit for simulating the wind and the operations of the wind turbine, an operational computer with a human–machine interface, a load system for simulating the actual wind load applied to each blade, and a real pitch bearing. Through the several tests based on HILS test bed, how well the pitch controller performed the given roles for each area in the entire wind speed area from cut-in to cut-out wind speed can be shown.