LQG-control of a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Focus on Torsional Vibrations

Sammanfattning: In this thesis it has been investigated if LQG control could be used to mitigate torsional oscillations in a variable speed, fixed pitch wind turbine. The wind turbine is a vertical axis wind turbine with a 40 m tall axis that is connected to a generator. The power extracted by the turbine is delivered to the grid via a passive rectifier and an inverter. By controlling the grid side inverter the current is controlled and hence the rotational speed can be controlled. A state space model was developed for the LQG controller. The model includes both the dynamics of the electrical system as swell as the two mass system, consisting of the turbine and the generator connected with a flexible shaft. The controller was designed to minimize a quadratic criterion that punishes both torsional oscillations, command following and input signal magnitude. Integral action was added to the controller to handle the nonlinear aerodynamic torque. The controller was compared to the existing control system that uses a PI controller to control the speed, and tested usingMATLAB Simulink. Simulations show that the LQG controller is just as good as the PI controller in controlling the speed of the turbine, and has the advantage that it can be tuned such that the occurrence of torsional oscillations is mitigated. The study also concluded that some external method of dampening torsional oscillations should be implemented to mitigate torsional oscillations in case of a grid fault or loss of PWM signal.