Collective control strategy for a cluster of stall-regulated offshore wind turbines

S. Hur and W.E. Leithead

Renewable Energy, 2016, vol. 85, issue C, 1260-1270

Abstract: The power converter is one of the most vulnerable components of a wind turbine. When the converter of an offshore wind turbine malfunctions, it could be difficult to resolve due to poor accessibility. A turbine generally has a dedicated controller that regulates its operation. In this paper, a collective control approach that allows a cluster of turbines to share a single converter, hence a single controller, that could be placed in a more accessible location. The resulting simplified turbines are constant-speed stall-regulated with standard asynchronous generators. Each cluster is connected by a mini-AC network, whose frequency can be varied through a centralised AC–DC–AC power converter. Potential benefits include improved reliability of each turbine due to simplification of the turbines and enhanced profit owing to improved accessibility. A cluster of 5 turbines is assessed compared to the situation with each turbine having its own converter. A collective control strategy that acts in response to the poorest control is proposed, as opposed to acting in response to the average control. The strategy is applied to a cluster model, and simulation results demonstrate that the control strategy could be more cost-effective than each turbine having its own converter, especially with optimal rotor design.

Keywords: Offshore wind farm control; Collective control; Wind turbine control; Wind turbine modelling; Stall-regulated wind turbines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811530183X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:85:y:2016:i:c:p:1260-1270

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2015.07.087

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().