PITCH CONTROL FOR VARIABLE SPEED WIND TURBINES

A Project Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

award of the Degree of

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING

BY

SUNAY MARTYA
(BE/15217/15)

ROBIN SINGH
(BE/15243/15)

ROHIT KUMAR
(BE/15315/15)

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MESRA, RANCHI – PATNA CAMPUS
2018

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 DECLARATION CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the work presented in the project entitled “Pitch
Control For Variable Speed Wind Turbines” in partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the award of Degree of Bachelor of Engineering of Birla
Institute of Technology Mesra, Ranchi is an authentic work carried out
under my supervision and guidance.
To the best of my knowledge, the content of this project does not form a
basis for the award of any previous Degree to anyone else.

Date: (Guide’s Name & Signature)

Department of Electrical &
Electronics Engineering

Birla Institute of Technology

Mesra, Ranchi – Patna

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 CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL

The foregoing project work entitled “PITCH CONTROL FOR VARIABLE SPEED WIND
TURBINE” here by approved as credible study that has been presented in satisfactory manner
and is recommended for its acceptance in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of
Bachelor of Engineering in ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONICS Engineering from Birla Institute
of Technology , Mesra.

INTERNAL EXAMINER

(Co-ordinator / HOD)

Department of EEE

iii
 ABSTRACT

The main thrust of this paper is to present an efficient method for the pitch control of large scale
wind turbines. After an investigation in wind turbine working regions, the “optimum” working
levels are determined. A PID controller is designed based on the Ziegler – Nichols method. By
appropriately tuning the controller gains, the proposed controller ensures achieving a rapid
convergence to the extracted power set point with the minimum of fluctuations even in extreme
wind conditions.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
It is our privilege to express our sincerest regards to our project coordinator as well as the Head
of Department of EEE Mr. Sanjay Kumar for his valuable inputs, able guidance, encouragement,
whole-hearted cooperation and constructive criticism throughout the duration of our project. We
deeply express our sincere thanks to Mr. Sanjay Kumar for encouraging and allowing us to
present the project on the topic “PITCH CONTROL FOR VARIABLE SPEED WIND
TURBINES”.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER NO. TITLE PAGE NO.

DECLARATION CERTIFICATE ii
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL iii
ABSTRACT iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT v
CONTENTS vi

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………….1
2. POWER CAPTURE OF WIND TURBINES………………………………………... 2-5
2.1 POWER COEFFICIENT..…………………………………………………………2
2.2 MAXIMUM POWER EXTRACTION….………………………………………..3-5
3. MODEL DESCRIPTION……………………………………………………………..6-9
3.1 WIND MODEL…………………………………………………………………....6
3.2 WIND TURBINE ROTOR.……………………………………………………….6-7
3.3 GEARBOX………………………………………………………………………...7-8
3.4 GENERATOR……………………………………………………………………..8-9
4. PID CONTROLLER DESIGN………………………………………………………..10-12
4.1 PID CONTROLLER TUNING……………………………….……..…………….10-11
4.2 CONTROLLER DESCRIPTION………………………….……………………...11-12
5. SIMULATION RESULTS…………………………………………………………….13-15
6. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………...16
7. FUTURE SCOPE………………………………………………………………………17
8. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………....18

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vii
 INTRODUCTION

Wind energy is one of the most promising sources of electrical energy in years to come. Modern
wind farms can produce serious amounts of energy without catastrophic climate issues, such as
green house gas emissions. Hence, a serious research over the wind turbines is required
nowadays more than ever before (Asharif et al., 2011). However, wind energy has to overcome
some technical as well as economical barriers, if it should produce a substantial part of
electricity. There are several ways to control a wind turbine system (Munteanu et al., 2008).
Pitch, passive stall, active stall and yaw control techniques are some of them.

The pitch control system monitors constantly the extracted power; the controller is designed to
regulate the pitch angle such that a desired power amount is obtained from a given level of wind
energy. On the other hand, the main characteristic of a passive stall control system is that the
wind turbine blades are placed steady on the rotor. Their geometry allows the wind to turn the
rotor, provided it remains within a desired range. If not, an amount of friction is developed at the
side of the blade opposite to the wind flow and that makes the wind turbine to decelerate
(Strazisar and Bright, 2004).

In yaw control systems the rotational speed and power output are regulated by the whole rotor
mechanism (Hansen, 2008). This technique is used for small wind turbines of 1kW rated power
or less. Large wind turbines with yaw control would be subjected to cyclic stresses that could
lead to the failure of the entire structure. Finally, the active stall control systems (Leinhos et al.,
2002) differ from the pitch control systems in that their control method uses the gradation of the
pitch angle. For low values of the wind the two approaches work in the same way. However,
when the generator of a wind turbine with active stall control reaches its set point, the system
turns the blades in the opposite direction with respect to the one of the pitch control system.

Hence, the control system increases the blades angle of attack in order to decelerate the rotor and
thus wasting the excess of wind energy. In the next sections, PID control schemes are studied for
the pitch control of wind turbines.

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 POWER CAPTURE OF WIND TURBINES

In order to construct an efficient controller, it is necessary to investigate the way the wind turbine
converts the wind energy into mechanical energy .Furthermore, a research on the turbine’s
working regions is needed in order to achieve the maximum power extraction in every wind
scenario.

2.1 Power Coefficient

Through the blades of the wind turbine an amount of wind energy is converted to electrical
power. The mechanical torque Pm produced by the wind turbine axis is (Zhang et al., 2008)

Pm =0.5× ρ × A ×C p ( λ , β) ×U 3 w (1)

The parameters in (1) denote

 ρ: the air density
 A: the area swept by blades
 Uw : the wind speed and
 Cp : the power coefficient with
 λ: the tip speed ratio and
 β: the blade pitch angle.
The tip speed ratio is defined as the ratio between
the blade tip speed and the wind speed
V tip R × ωr
λ= =
Vw Vw
With

 ωr: the rotor speed and

 R: the radius of the wind turbine blade.

Equation (1) is valid when the airflow is constant, but in practice this is not the case. In fact, the
steep alternations of wind produce power deviation from its expected value.

The power coefficient Cp represents the percentage of the kinetic energy that is contained in the
wind and rotates the wind turbine blades. The value of Cp depends on the factors λ and β. Its

2
upper theoretical bound, called Betz limit is equal to 0.593. In actual situations the Betz limit
varies into the range [0.4, 0.5] and depends on the wind turbine type. The dependence of the
power coefficient on λ and β is shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1: Power coefficient 3D curve.

Several studies (Ackermann, 2005) have shown that in variable speed wind turbines the
“optimal” mechanical power is obtained whenever the turbine works with the maximum Cp.
Besides, the maximum value of Cp is obtained for a specific value of tip speed ratio λopt.
Obviously, the mechanical torque (1) is later converted into electrical torque.

2.2 Maximum Power Extraction

In order to achieve the optimal power extraction operation points for a wind turbine system one
has to follow a procedure related to λ: In equation (2) the value of λ is kept constant and then, for
each wind speed value, the optimal rotor speed is calculated (Zhang et al., 2008). The
mathematical model used is
Pm
T m= (3)
ωr

and has the internal mechanical torque Tm as input. In Fig. 2 the Tm waveforms for different
wind speeds ωr are illustrated. The maximum power for each waveform is achieved when the
product Tm ωr is maximized, as well. Relating all points of maximum power one can create the
dashed waveform shown in the right bottom of Fig. 2. Obviously, the control action should

3
ensure the wind turbine to work as close as possible to the dashed waveform, in order to achieve
the maximum power extraction.

Figure 2: Wind turbine rotor torque - speed waveforms.

In real life cases the dashed waveform is used only for low power values. For upper power
values the system should protect itself by limiting the rotor speed under its set points. The
proposed operation waveform for the wind turbine under consideration is illustrated in Fig. 3.
One can observe that the dashed waveform in Fig. 3 is composed from (i) an initial region with
low incline that follows the optimal power extraction (ii) the steep region that limits the rotor
speed up to 100 rpm and (iii) the horizontal region where the controller takes action and
decelerates the system.

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Figure 3: Proposed wind turbine rotor torque - speed waveform.

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 3 MODEL DESCRIPTION

A variable speed wind turbine is generally composed of several components, namely the wind
model, the rotor, the gearbox and the generator that are described in this section.

3.1 Wind Model

Wind speed is calculated as an average of the fixed- point wind speed over the whole rotor; the
tower shadow and rotational turbulences are also taken into account. The component of main
importance in this model is the normally distributed white noise generator. A problem that
occurs when using white noise generators is that different simulation tools use different
algorithms and thus different wind time series are obtained. In order to overcome this drawback,
a normally distributed white noise generator has been implemented in (Marsaglia and Tsang,
2000); it is based on the Ziggurat Algorithm and uses the so-called ‘C’ S-Function.

The simulation wind model depends on the following parameters:

 Average Wind Speed: 10 m/s
 Length Scale: 600 m
 Wind Turbulence Intensity: 30% or 50

3.2 Wind Turbine Rotor

The rotor is a component that extracts the energy from the wind and converts it into mechanical
energy (Slootweg et al., 2003). The aero-turbine model has two inputs, namely the wind speed
and pitch angle. The following parameter values have been used to extract the internal
mechanical torque.
 Blade Radius: 22.5 m
 Air Density: 1.25 Kg/m3
 Cut In Speed: 3 m/sec
 Cut Out Speed: 25 m/sec

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 Besides, numerical approximations for given values of λ and β (Ackermann, 2002) have been
used to calculate the power coefficient CP. More precisely,
151
C p ( λ , β )=0.73 ( −0.58 β−0.002θ2.14 −13.2)e−18.4 / λ
i
(4)
λi

With
1
λ i=
1 0.003 (5)
− 3
λ−0.002 β β +1

Figure 4: Pitch control strategy wind speed

3.3 Gearbox

At this step the low angular speed produced by the wind turbine rotor is converted into high
speed in order to reach the generator nominal values (Iov et al., 2004). The gearbox is a two-
mass model as shown in Fig. 4. Let Twtr and Tgen be the corresponding rotor and generator
torques.

Figure 5: Two-mass gearbox.

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The dynamic equations of the drive-train written on the generator side are
d Ω̇wtr
Ṫ wtr= J̇ wtr + Ḋ e ( Ω̇wtr −Ω gen ) + k̇ se ( θ̇wtr −θ gen) (6)
dt

d θ̇ ˙wtr
=Ω̇ wtr (7)
dt
d Ωgen
−T gen=J gen + Ḋ e ( Ω gen−Ω̇ wtr ) + k̇ se ( θ gen−θ̇ wtr ) (8)
dt
d θ gen
=Ω gen (9)
dt

where the equivalent stiffness is given by

1 1 1
= +
k̇ se k wtr k gen (10)
k 2 gear

and the equivalent moment of inertia for the rotor is

1
j̇ wtr= 2
J wtr (11)
k gear

where
 Moment of inertia (Electric Machine Side): Jgen =
90 kg*m2
 Moment of inertia (Turbine Rotor Side): Jwtr =
49.5*105 kg*m2
 Shaft Stiffness: kse = 114*106 N*m/rad
 Damping Coefficient of Shaft: De = 755.658*103 N*m*sec/rad

3.4 Generator

The generator of the wind turbine under consideration is a squirrel cage induction machine with
deep bar effect (Boukhezzara et al., 2007). The generator has two inputs, namely the angular

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velocity from the gearbox Ωgen and an amount of voltage from the electric network required to
start working. The nominal value of the generator extracted power is 2 MW.
The parameters of the generator are:
 Rated Voltage per Phase: 960 Volts
 Rated Current per Phase: 1310 A
 Base Frequency: 50 Hz
 Number of Polar pairs: 2
 Starting Current: 8.8 A
 Phase angle at Standstill: 79.5 deg.
 Stator Resistance: 0.005 Ohm
 Stator self-induction: 4.074*10-4 H
 Rotor Resistance: 0.0089 Ohm
 Rotor Self-Induction: 2.992*10-4 H

(a)

(b)

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 Fig 6 : Pitch control strategy ; (a) Wind speed; (b) generator power

4 PID CONTROLLER DESIGN

The controller design of a wind turbine requires determining the physical quantities to be taken
into account i.e. wind speed, mechanical torque of the rotor, angular speed of the machine and
the amount of extracted power. In our approach the extracted power has to converge to its set
point. Besides, the fact that the wind speed is of crucial importance to the wind turbine operation
makes the controller construction quite difficult, since wind speed is a non-linear variable
transferred into the system. Thus, the controller should take into account the wind speed and
continuously adjust the blades such that the stability of the wind turbine system is guaranteed.

PID control is one of the most popular methods in controlling systems as wind turbines. Such
controllers are developed either independently or as a combination with other methods (Ebrahim
et al., 2010). Recall that the transfer function of the PID controller has the form
KI
G c ( s )=K p + K D S+ (12)
S

where KP, KD and KI denote the proportional, derivative and integral gains to be determined
during the design procedure.

4.1 PID Controller Tuning

There is no standard algorithm for tuning of the PID controller parameters (Hara et al., 2006).
The most popular of the proposed experimental methods is the well known Ziegler – Nichols
rule (Ziegler et al., 1942). It is performed by first setting the integral and derivative gains to zero.
Then, the proportional gain KP is increased (starting at zero) until it reaches the ultimate value
Ku for which the output of the control loop oscillates with a constant amplitude. The value Ku

10
and the oscillation period Tu are used to set the PID controller gains, for a specific type of
controller, according to Tab. 1.

For the wind turbine model described in Section 3 it was found that K u= 3.33 and Tu = 2.65sec.
According to Tab.1, the values of the PID gains are: KP = 2, KI = 1.51 and KD = 0.66. Since the
above method is an experimental one, the gain values can be further improved for the system
under consideration. Improved gain values should lead to more accurate closed-loop
performances and, in some sense, “optimize” the control action. Since in this procedure it is not
possible to keep constant two of the gains and adjust the third one, one needs to find a
combination of adjustments in order to achieve the “optimal” tuning.

Table 1: Ziegler - Nichols method.

Control type KP KI KD
P KU/2
PI KU/2.2 1.2KP/TU
Classic PID 0.6KU 2KP/TU KPTU/8
Pessen Integral Rule 0.7KU 2.5KP/TU 0.15KP/8
Some overshoot 0.33KU 2KP/TU KPTU/3
No overshoot 0.2KU 2KP/TU KPTU/3

In the light of the above observations, the system’s operation has been tested with gain value sets
obtained from the “optimal” tuning. More precisely, the gain values have been adjusted by
considering that the wind model follows the same wind curve. It has been found that for K P =2,
KI = 0.01 and KD = 2 the power extraction curve was converging tightly to its reference value.

4.2 Controller Description

The block diagram of the closed-loop system is given in Fig. 5. The look-up table and PID
controller blocks are created for the control design of the wind turbine.

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 Figure 7: Wind turbine simulation model.
The look-up table block is used to determine the appropriate pitch angles with input the real-time
wind value as described in Section 2.2. The PID controller block contains the blocks necessary to
create the controller resulting from the gain value tuning of Section 4.1.

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 5 SIMULATION RESULTS

The wind turbine under consideration has been simulated in the Matlab ® Simulink
programming environment using the Wind Turbine Blockset (WTB) Toolbox (Iov et al., 2004).
For the simulation purposes, the PID controller design proposed in Section 4.1 has been
compared with (i) the PID controller resulting according to the Ziegler – Nichols rules and (ii)
the one proposed in the literature and called from here on “initial PID”. More precisely, in
(Abbas and Abdulsada, 2010) a PID controller has been designed by using the rotational speed to
control the wind turbine performance. In order to assess the controller performance, the root
mean square error between the actual rotational speed and the desired one indicated the
capability of the controller to reject the wind speed fluctuations. The PID controller parameters
tuned according this approach were: KP = 15, Ki = 20 and Kd = 0.1.

5.1 Wind Waveforms

The performance of the three abovementioned controllers has been tested for both, normal and
extreme wind conditions. First, a normal wind was considered as in Fig. 6.

Figure 8: Normal wind waveform.

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It was assumed to vary in the range [7m/s – 15m/s]; its turbulence was similar to real-time wind
fluctuation values. A second group of simulations were obtained for an extreme wind scenario as
shown in Fig. 7.

Figure 9: Extreme wind waveform.

Wind speed values vary into the range [2m/s – 22m/s] and are characterized by high turbulence.
It should be noted that such a wind waveform is rarely encountered in nature.

Fig 10: Output power

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Fig 11: Mechanical speed

Fig 12: Pitch angle curve

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 6 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a design approach for the control of a variable speed wind turbine system is
proposed. The extracted power has to achieve a desirable set point of 2MW, despite wind speed
fluctuations. By appropriately adjusting the PID controller gains, the proposed control scheme
ensures the closed-loop system’s stability and an acceptable tracking, even under extreme wind
conditions. The output convergence to the set point has been shown to be faster and tighter, as
compared with existing PID methods. Different control schemes for the variable
speed wind machine are presently under investigation.

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 7 FUTURE SCOPE
Using computational fluid dynamics to develop the Simulator for Wind Farm
Applications and other modeling and controls tools, which help wind farm operators
minimize the impact of turbine wake effects by investigate plant performance under a full
range of atmospheric conditions. Studies have shown that by coordinating turbine controls to
curtail wake effects, the overall wind power plant output could be increased by 4%–5%.

17
 REFERENCES

Abbas F. A. R., Abdulsada M. A., 2010. Simulation of Wind-Turbine Speed Control by

MATLAB, International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 5.

Ackermann T., 2002. Transmission systems for offshore wind farms, IEEE Power Engineering
Review.

Ackermann T., 2005. Wind Power in Power Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Asharif F., Tamaki S., Nagado T., Nagtata T., Asharif M. R., 2011. Analysis of Non-linear
Adaptive Friction and Pitch Angle Control of Small-Scaled Wind Turbine System, Springer-
Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg.

Boukhezzara B., Lupua L., Siguerdidjanea H., Handb M., 2007. Multivariable control strategy
for variable speed, Renewable Energy, Vol. 32.

Dunney F., Y. Paoz L. Y., Wrightx A. D., Jonkman B., Neil Kelle N., 2010. Combining standard
feedback controllers with feed forward blade pitch control for load mitigation in wind turbines,
Proceedings of the 48th AIAA aerospace sciences meeting, Orlando.

Ebrahim M. A., Metwally A. E., Bendary F., Mansour W. M., Ramadan H. S., Ortega R. and
Romero J., 2010. Optimization of Proportional-Integral-Differential Controller for Wind Power
Plant Using Particle Swarm Optimization Technique, IJETSE International Journal of Emerging
Technologies in Sciences and Engineering, Vol.2, No.2.

Geyler M., Caselitz P., 2007. Individual blade pitch control design for load reduction on large
wind turbines, Proceedings of the European Wind Energy Conference, Milan, Italy.

Hansen M. O. L., 2008. Aerodymanics of Wind Turbines, Second Edition, Earths can.

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