Optimal wind turbine control with constraints on admissible structural loads

master thesis, 2016.

With recent trends of increasingly large wind turbines coupled with the inability of classical control methods to handle the increased elasticity of the tower and the blades, the need for new control methods is rising. This thesis defines a nonlinear wind turbine model with three degrees of freedom: rotor rotation around main axes and flexibility of the wind turbine tower and blades, and identifies model parameters. Developed model is linearised, state space representation is computed and finally an optimal controller is designed using quadratic criterion and inequality constraints. Use of such controller can reduce structural loads and maintain integrity of the wind turbine construction.

Keywords: wind turbine, parameter identication, model predictive control, structural loads