Control of Wind Turbine by LPV Gain Scheduling with Tower Load Reduction

The aim of this study is to design a suitable LPV (Linear parameter varying) controller for large wind turbine operating in high winds, with the objective to regulate the generator speed at the nominal value, and to alleviate the aerodynamic loads induced on the tower structure by wind forces. This LPV controller is synthesized by minimizing the H∞ norm of the closed-loop system and is gain scheduled according to the pitch angle in real time. The performance of the proposed controller in reducing the tower loads is demonstrated on the FAST simulator for the NREL 5MW wind turbine, and is compared to the classical baseline PI (Proportional-integral) to show that an improvement in performance is obtained for the entire operating range of the wind turbine.