Fault Tolerant Wind Speed Estimator used in Wind Turbine Controllers

Abstract

Advanced control schemes can be used to optimize energy production and cost of energy in modern wind turbines. These control schemes most often rely on wind speed estimations. These designs of wind speed estimators are, however, not designed to be fault tolerant towards faults in the used sensors. In this paper a fault tolerant wind speed estimator is designed based on a set of unknown input observers, each designed to the different sets of non-faulty sensors. Faults in the rotor, generator and wind speed sensors are considered. The designed wind speed estimator is passive tolerant towards faults in the wind speed sensors, and faults in the generator and rotor speed sensors are accommodated by an active fault tolerant observer scheme in which the faults are detected and identified, and the observer corresponding to the non-faulty sensors are used. The potential of the scheme is shown by applying the proposed wind speed estimator to a simulation model of a wind turbine. Notice that since the faults are accommodated in the observer scheme the actual controller do not need to be adjusted or reconfigured to accommodate the sensor faults.