Adaptive model predictive controller for power regulation and load reduction in large wind turbines

Pitch control is related to the efficient energy conversion and safe operation of wind turbine, which is a challenging control issue because of the highly nonlinear dynamics of wind turbine, system constraints and stochastic environmental disturbances, etc. In this article, we propose the adaptive model predictive pitch control strategy based on linear parameter varying (LPV) model to solve the pitch control issue of large-scale wind turbine. Firstly, a high-fidelity LPV model is constructed to approximate the high-nonlinearity dynamics of wind turbine. The gap metric theory is introduced to optimize the selection of local models. Based on the proposed LPV model, an adaptive model predictive controller with linear time-varying Kalman filter is designed for large-scale wind turbine. The benchmark 5 megawatt (MW) wind turbine model provided by FAST is employed to evaluate the controller performance. The results show that, compared with the traditional gain scheduling proportional–integral control strategy, the proposed control strategy can achieve better power regulation and load reduction performance under gust, step and turbulent wind.