Abstract
Accurate and reproducible aeroelastic load calculations are indispensable for designing modern multi-MW wind turbines. They are also essential for assessing the load reduction capabilities of advanced wind turbine control strategies. In this paper, we contribute to this topic by introducing the TUB Controller, an advanced open-source wind turbine controller capable of performing full load calculations. It is compatible with the aeroelastic software QBlade, which features a lifting line free vortex wake aerodynamic model. The paper describes in detail the controller and includes a validation study against an established open-source controller from the literature. Both controllers show comparable performance with our chosen metrics. Furthermore, we analyze the advanced load reduction capabilities of the individual pitch control strategy included in the TUB Controller. Turbulent wind simulations with the DTU 10 MW Reference Wind Turbine featuring the individual pitch control strategy show a decrease in the out-of-plane and torsional blade root bending moment fatigue loads of 14% and 9.4% respectively compared to a baseline controller.
Highlights
Over the past years, wind turbines have increased significantly in size in an effort to reduce the cost of wind energy and make it a competitive source of energy
We address the aforementioned issues by introducing the TUB Controller (TUBCon)
E it can be seen that the influence of the Individual Pitch Control (IPC) strategy on Ω and P is small. This is mainly due to the frequency separation between the Collective Pitch Control (CPC) and IPC strategies
Summary
Wind turbines have increased significantly in size in an effort to reduce the cost of wind energy and make it a competitive source of energy. The structure of the turbine components such as rotor blades has to be stiffer, which requires more or stronger material This leads to an increase in the cost of energy. A way of counteracting the load increase seen in larger wind turbines is through the use of advanced wind turbine controllers This allows for less material use in the design of the different components and results in a decrease of the cost of energy
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