Linear parameter varying control of wind turbines covering both partial load and full load conditions

Abstract This paper considers the design of linear parameter varying (LPV) controllers for wind turbines in order to obtain a multivariable control law that covers the entire nominal operating trajectory. The paper first presents a controller structure for selecting a proper operating trajectory as a function of estimated wind speed. The dynamic control law is based on LPV controller synthesis with general parameter dependency by gridding the parameter space. The controller construction can, for medium‐ to large‐scale systems, be difficult from a numerical point of view, because the involved matrix operations tend to be ill‐conditioned. The paper proposes a controller construction algorithm together with various remedies for improving the numerical conditioning the algorithm. The proposed algorithm is applied to the design of a LPV controller for wind turbines, and a comparison is made with a controller designed using classical techniques to conclude that an improvement in performance is obtained for the entire operating envelope. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.