Pitch Control of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine

Abstract

Wind energy is fast becoming the most preferable alternative to conventional sources of electric power. Owing to the perennial availability of wind and the considerable range of power control, wind turbines are now coming up in almost all parts of the world. In the early days of development, wind turbines were designed to rotate at constant speed through pitch control or stall control. The modern wind turbines implement pitch control in order to tap maximum energy at wind speeds lower than rated wind speed.
In this project, three different models of pitch actuator system have been studied and a discrete time adaptive PID model has been proposed where the gains of the PID controller are modified based on the time response parameters of the previous time cycle. It is expected to offer better control over a wide range of wind speeds.
Keywords: Pitch control, renewable energy, adaptive PID Control, Wind Energy Conversion Systems