Abstract:
A wind turbine comprising a tower, a nacelle, a rotor including a plurality of blades, an electrical generator operatively coupled to the rotor, and a control system. The control system comprises: a sensing system operable to output a signal indicative of the torsional oscillation frequency of the nacelle; a torsional damping module configured to monitor the torsional oscillation signal and to determine one or more blade pitch command signals for damping the torsional oscillation of the tower, and a filter module configured to receive the one or more blade pitch command signals as inputs and to output a respective one or more modified blade pitch command signals, wherein the filter module is configured to filter the one or more blade pitch command input signals to exclude frequency components greater than the torsional oscillation frequency. Aspects of the invention also relate to a method, a computer program software product and a controller for implementing the method.
Abstract:
The present invention relates to control of wind turbines in a situation where a fault condition is detected. Control of a wind turbine is described where a control trajectory and a safe-mode trajectory are calculated based on the current operational state of the wind turbine. If the fault condition is detected the wind turbine is controlled using the safe-mode trajectory, otherwise, the normal operation of the wind turbine is continued where the wind turbine is controlled using the control trajectory.
Abstract:
A method of controlling a wind turbine is described. The method comprises calculating a current wear rate for each of the main bearing of a turbine rotor and the blade bearings of rotor blades mounted on the turbine rotor, and calculating a blade pitch adjustment of the rotor blades to achieved a desired ratio between main bearing wear and blade bearing wear in dependence on the calculated current wear rates of the main bearing and the blade bearings.
Abstract:
The present disclosure relates to a control system for a wind turbine comprising more controllers and where at least some of the controllers operate at different sample frequencies. The control system comprises at least two controller units, a first controller (10) for determining an operational value (OV) of a sub-system and a second controller (20) for the sub-system. The second controller operates at a higher sample frequency than the first controller. It is disclosed that a faster reaction to a received demand value (V1), received for controlling the sub-system, can be obtained by setting the operational value (OV) of the sub-system as the sum of an internal operational value (V5) and a difference value (V4).
Abstract:
A method for controlling a wind turbine during a safety operation is disclosed. A safety pitch control system is provided to pitch the blades individually at a number of pre-set approximately constant pitch rates including a first pitch rate and a second pitch rate lower than the first pitch rate. In response to a command for initiating the safety operation the blades are pitched towards a feathering position by the safety pitch control system including the blades being pitched according to a safety pitch strategy wherein for all the blades the pitch rate is changed between the first pitch rate and the second pitch rate according to a function of each blade azimuthal position. This is done such that each blade in turn is closer to the feathering position than the others.
Abstract:
A method of operating a wind turbine during a service, wherein the wind turbine comprises at least one rotor-nacelle assembly, the or each rotor-nacelle assembly comprising a rotor; the method comprising: detecting that a service is to be or is being carried out on the wind turbine; and, on detecting that a service is to be or is being carried out on the wind turbine, reducing an operating level of the or each rotor-nacelle assembly.
Abstract:
This invention relates to obtaining a movement signal indicative of a vibrational movement of a tower. An actuator signal is then determined based on the movement signal, the actuator signal being determined to produce a desired force to counteract the vibrational movement of the tower. A pitch reference offset signal for each one of a plurality of pitch-adjustable rotor blades is then determined based on the actuator signal. An integration is then applied to the pitch reference offset signals to determine modified pitch reference offset signals based on the integrated pitch reference offset signals. A pitch signal for each of the blades is the determined based on the modified pitch reference offset signals, the pitch signals being arranged to adjust the the blades to provide the force that counteracts the vibrational movement of the tower.
Abstract:
A method is provided for controlling the shutdown of a wind turbine of the type having a rotor, the rotor comprising one or more wind turbine blades. The method comprises dynamically determining a rotor speed reference; obtaining a measure of the rotor speed of the rotor; determining an error between the rotor speed reference and the rotor speed of the rotor; and controlling a pitch of one or more of the wind turbine blades based on the determined error. A corresponding wind turbine controller and a wind turbine including such a controller are also provided.
Abstract:
The present invention relates to control of wind turbines where a fatigue load measure is taken into account. Control of a wind turbine is described where a control trajectory is calculated based on a fatigue load measure, the fatigue load measure being determined from a predicted operational trajectory. In embodiments the predicted operational trajectories are calculated by using a model predictive control (MPC) routine, and the fatigue load measure includes a rainflow count algorithm.
Abstract:
A method of detecting a fault mode of a sensor is provided. The sensor may be, for example, a bending moment sensor and may sense a bending moment of a blade on a wind turbine generator (WTG). The method includes comparing data output by a first sensor with reference data indicating what is expected to be output by the first sensor to produce a first comparison result and comparing data output by the first sensor with data output by a second sensor to produce a second comparison result. A determination of whether the first sensor has entered a fault mode is made based at least in part on the first and second comparison results.