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Wind Turbine Controller 101. Part 1

Published on June 19, 2018

Simon Pipkin Follow

Head of Resource Analysis at REG Power Management 16 1 1
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This article will give a brief introduction to the brain of the wind turbine and how it has
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evolved, particularly in recent years.

What is a Wind Turbine Controller?

It is essentially a collection of sensors sending signals to hardware that houses software to

process them and sends out new signals to actuators.

Its primary objective is to maximise production without causing your turbine to fall down or
blow up!

It does this through many types of sensors and actuators feeding into three functions:

1. Changing operational states (run, pause, stop etc) through supervisory control.

2. Progress the wind turbine through the power curve zones using feedback loops to
maximise production within the design constraints set. See Figure 1.

3. An independent and fail-safe safety system which will stop the turbine incase the other
functions do not.
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Figure 1: Basic Feedback Loops

The feedback loop in Figure 1 is the essential operation of an early pitch-regulated wind
turbine, but as they have increased in size and been placed in more challenging
environments they have required more control to stay within their design limits. Figure 2
shows some of the additional loops we expect to see in a modern turbine.

Figure 2: Evolution of Feedback Loops

In Figure 3 you can see the stages of the wind turbine power curve:

1. Where supervisor control goes from pause to run.

2. The closed loop control looks at rpm and wind speed to maximise output as efficiently
as possible. Zone 2.5 is where the turbine is working the hardest as it is transitioning
between two zones with different objectives. This is where responsive sensors, software and
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3. The controller is looking to maintain a fixed performance within design limits, so

efficiency is somewhat ignored.

4. Where supervisory control switches back into a pause state after cut out.

Figure 3: Power Curve Zones

Controller Evolution

As wind turbine sizes have increased structural loads have become a more dominant factor
in the design limitations. This increase causes greater fatigue stress on the components
which can lead to early failure. To counteract this more sensors, more loops and the
integration of loops are needed to keep the wind turbine within its design limits, see Table 1.

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Table 1: Controller Evolution

I heard an interesting analogy for controllers the other day: 20 years ago the most popular
mobile was the Nokia 3310, a very basic mobile in comparison to the iPhone X – but they
still so the same basic things: phone calls and texts. Some would probably argue that the old
Nokias did the basics better, and in some cases the same could be said of wind turbines!
With added complexity comes the greater chance of error. For example, the noise constraint
controller could assess conditions (wind direction and speed) every 1 second, and change the
turbine's state on the same timescale. This obviously makes for a very reactive curtailment
strategy, but is it necessary?

1. To best replicate the results of the initial assessments (in order to maintain compliance),
noise curtailment strategies are derived on an average of the conditions. For example, a
10 minute average assessed by the controller every 1-5 minutes.

2. When the conditions are borderline the controller could be constantly switching the
turbine on and off putting large stresses on the turbine components.

3. Constant changes between a run and pause state could increase aerodynamic noise as the
blades keep pitching in and out of the wind!

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this summary of the wind turbine's controller of interest. Part 2 will
concentrate on the opportunities to upgrade older controllers and why you might consider
this.

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1 Comment

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