Robust and simple yaw controller design for a low power wind turbine through the shuffled frog leaping algorithm

Abstract

Recently low power wind turbines have been attracted great attention to generate electricity in remote areas due to considerable increase in conventional energy cost. Among those sources, wind energy is the most prominent and is used in many places where low power wind turbines are highly applicable. Unfortunately, most of these turbines have a mechanical yaw controller with the wind tail rather than electronically designed controller due to increased total cost. However, this affects the efficiency of the wind turbine more than expected as well as its performance. In this investigation, a low cost yaw controller for a 2 kW horizontal axis wind turbine was designed by a simple and software implementation. The results show that the approach produced encouraging and meaningful outcomes to increase electricity generation through the fully controlled small wind turbine by avoiding turbulence effect on it.