On-line redesign based approach for fault accommodation in wind turbines

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time mechanism to tolerate faults occurring in a Wind Turbine (WT) system. This system is a FAST coded simulator designed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory's. The demonstrated mechanism lies under the taxonomy of Active Fault-Tolerant Control (AFTC) systems, namely online redesign based approach. In the proposed approach, we do not use any a priori information about the model of the turbine in real-time. In fact, we use online measurements generated by the WT. Based on the given control specifications, and the observed measurements an occurring fault is accommodated by reconfiguring the controller such that the WT generates the rated power even under faulty conditions. Secondly, no use of an explicit fault-diagnosis module is seen in this approach. Therefore, the fault accommodation delay in the proposed AFTC system is smaller than the delay as experienced in the traditional structure of AFTC systems.