Reliable Real-Time Embedded Control for Offshore Wind Turbines

Reliable and sustainable control has begun to stimulate research and development in a wide range of industrial communities particularly for systems that demand a high degree of reliability and availability (sustainability) and at the same time characterised by expensive and/or safety critical maintenance work. For offshore wind farms a clear conflict exists between ensuring a high degree of availability and reducing costly maintenance times. Wind turbines have highly non-linear dynamics and a stochastic and uncontrollable driving force as input in the form of wind speed, presenting an interesting challenge for modern control methods. Suitable control methods can provide sustainable maximisation of energy conversion efficiency over wider than normally expected wind speeds, whilst also giving a degree of “tolerance” to certain faults, providing an important impact on maintenance scheduling, e.g. by capturing the effects of some turbine system faults before they become serious.