Cascade Control of the Ground Station Module of an Airborne Wind Energy System

Ali Arshad Uppal, Manuel C. R. M. Fernandes, Sérgio Vinha and Fernando A. C. C. Fontes
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Ali Arshad Uppal: SYSTEC and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Manuel C. R. M. Fernandes: SYSTEC and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Sérgio Vinha: SYSTEC and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Fernando A. C. C. Fontes: SYSTEC and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-25

Abstract: An airborne wind energy system (AWES) can harvest stronger wind streams at higher altitudes which are not accessible to conventional wind turbines. The operation of AWES requires a controller for the tethered aircraft/kite module (KM), as well as a controller for the ground station module (GSM). The literature regarding the control of AWES mostly focuses on the trajectory tracking of the KM. However, an advanced control of the GSM is also key to the successful operation of an AWES. In this paper we propose a cascaded control strategy for the GSM of an AWES during the traction or power generation phase. The GSM comprises a winch and a three-phase induction machine (IM), which acts as a generator. In the outer control-loop, an integral sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm is designed to keep the winch velocity at the prescribed level. A detailed stability analysis is also presented for the existence of the SMC for the perturbed winch system. The rotor flux-based field oriented control (RFOC) of the IM constitutes the inner control-loop. Due to the sophisticated RFOC, the decoupled and instantaneous control of torque and rotor flux is made possible using decentralized proportional integral (PI) controllers. The unknown states required to design RFOC are estimated using a discrete time Kalman filter (DKF), which is based on the quasi-linear model of the IM. The designed GSM controller is integrated with an already developed KM, and the AWES is simulated using MATLAB and Simulink. The simulation study shows that the GSM control system exhibits appropriate performance even in the presence of the wind gusts, which account for the external disturbance.

Keywords: airborne wind energy system (AWES); induction machine control; cascade control; sliding mode control (SMC); discrete time Kalman filter (DKF); field oriented control (FOC) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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