On LiDAR-assisted wind turbine retrofit control and fatigue load reductions

Abstract

The use of upstream wind speed measurement has motivated the development of LiDAR-assisted control for enhancing rotor speed tracking and fatigue structural load reductions. However, conventional LiDAR-assisted control designs often require altering the existing controller architecture, for example, by sending an additional feed-forward pitch angle signal to the pitch actuator or by incorporating the feed-forward pitch rate into the feedback controller. This work proposes LiDAR-assisted retrofit control solutions that can be implemented without any prior knowledge or modifications of the existing feedback controller. Specifically, the feed-forward pitch action is provoked by modifying the rotor speed measurement. Three retrofit methods are proposed according to the level of retrofit requirement and complexity. Numerical simulation results showed that all three LiDAR-assisted retrofit solutions could achieve good thrust-related load reductions. Thus, the proposed LiDAR-assisted retrofit solutions present a simple control upgrade to extend the lifetime of existing turbines.