Active yaw control with sensorless wind speed and direction measurements for horizontal axis wind turbines

An active yaw control algorithm for wind turbines without wind intensity and direction measurement is presented. The algorithm is based on the maximum generated power as an indication to determine the maximum wind speed direction. Few program instructions are added to the controller program to implement the Hill Climbing Control for maximum power from either the load current and wind direction. The microcontroller uses the same voltage and current data as the load control. The power variation determines the turbine yaw motor action (direction of rotation and time of turn on) for an optimum output power. In order to evaluate the control performance, several test cases were analysed for discussion in this paper.