This study focuses on an advanced second-order sliding mode control strategy for a variable speed wind turbine based on a permanent magnet synchronous generator to maximize wind power extraction while simultaneously reducing the mechanical stress effect. The control design based on a modified version of the super-twisting algorithm with variable gains can be applied to the cascaded system scheme comprising the current control loop and speed control loop. The proposed control inheriting the well-known robustness of the sliding technique successfully deals with the problems of essential nonlinearity of wind turbine systems, the effects of disturbance regarding variation on the parameters, and the random nature of wind speed. In addition, the advantages of the adaptive gains and the smoothness of the control action strongly reduce the chatter signals of wind turbine systems. Finally, with comparison with the traditional super-twisting algorithm, the performance of the system is verified through simulation results under wind speed turbulence and parameter variations.