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Hardware in the loop wind turbine simulator for control system testing

Abstract:

This chapter illustrates how to set up an inexpensive but effective Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) platform for the test of wind turbine (WT) controllers. The dynamics of the WT are simulated on the open-source National Renewable Energy Laboratory WT simulator called FAST (Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence), which emulates all required input signals of the controller and reacts to the controller commands (almost) like an onshore real turbine of 5 MW. The dynamic torque control system runs on an open hardware Arduino microcontroller board, which is connected to the virtual WT via USB. In particular, the power generation control in the full load region for variable-speed variable-pitch wind turbines is considered through torque and pitch control. The HIL proposed platform is used to characterize the behavior of the WT in normal operation as well as in fault operation. In particular, a stuck/unstuck fault is modeled and the behavior of a proposed chattering torque controller is analyzed in comparison to a baseline torque controller.