Small Wind turbine for Variable Speed with Flexible

Blades and Automatically Mechanical Pitching

Tonny W. Rasmussen Arne Johansen
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark Independent Wind Power, Denmark
E-mail: twr@elektro.dtu.dk E-mail: info@independent-windpower.com

AbstractʊWind energy have for many years been a growing generator includes permanent magnets for battery charting
alternative to fossil energy. The sizes of turbines are increasing supplying the control system.
to megawatt level. Wind turbines operate in a wide range of
wind speeds but are shot down for high wind speeds. Traditional The main mechanical parameters of the wind turbine are
concepts are relatively stiff and have a cause stress on the given in table I.
gearbox. The turbine described in this paper overcomes some of TABLE I
these challenges by having flexibly and pitchebly blades. This WIND TURBINE PARAMETERS
means that the turbine can operate at turbulent sites and Parameter Value
withstand wind burst without high stress level on the gearbox.
This paper describes the mechanical principle, electrical power Hub hide 13m
production and measurements from the sites. At the end of the Diameter of the rotor 7.5m
paper conclusions are described. Blade length 2.5m
Effective blade area 39.3m2
Index Terms—Varible speed, flexibly blades, mechanical Gear ratio 1:7.65
pitching, voltage control, frequency control. Pitch – bend ratio 1:1
Generator Power 10kW
Introduction Mechanical Power (9m/s) 8.8kW
Wind energy has been used for many years. Commercial
wind turbines had grown to a size op to 8MW. Also an A. Mechanical Principals
upcoming market for small wind turbines of about 10kW is Flexibly blades are an essential part of the concept. The
under development. This power level is popular for nacelle is seen in Fig. 1, with the tower and two blades.
households and small farms in the countryside. Another The pitch motor used for the variable pitch [3], gearbox
application is as stand-alone wind turbines at remote places and generator are placed inside the white shield forming the
such as islands or in mountain regions. The last placements nacelle.
pose challenges to the wind turbines due to a large variation
in wind speeds and wind bursts in the open sea. In mountains
turbulent conditions cause increased mechanical stress on
shaft and gearbox.
The wind turbine described in this paper deal with some of
the previous mentioned challenges due to the flexibly and
independent blades. The blades can pitch mechanically when
they bend but can also be pitched from the control system.
Due to stand-alone applications the wind turbine is equipped
with a synchronous generator including both permanent
magnets and an excitation system that is operated by the Fig. 1. Wind turbine nacelle with the main shaft and the flexibly blades.
control system.
The paper focuses on the wind turbine control system and Fig. 2, is a close-up photo where the red springs are seen above
present measurements from the installation site. The solution and below the main shaft. The hinges are placed at the end of the
is compared with a traditional 10kW wind turbine. main sharft. The pitch transmission and the mechanical pitching is
placed between the blades. The transmission from the pitch motor is
I. WIND TURBINE CONCEPT fitted through the center of the main shaft.
The wind turbine has a two blade rotor with a horizontal Gear box:
main shaft. The turbine is a downwind system due to the The gearbox has a ratio of 1:7.65 and is seen in the front of Fig. 3.
bending of the flexibly blades. For stand-alone applications At wind bursts the stress on the gearbox is large [2].
the turbine is equipped with a synchronous generator. The

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 excitation is used for the frequency control of the wind
turbine.

The induced voltage is given as (1)


௏ή௦ ௏ή௦
‫ܧ‬ோெௌ ൌ ‫ݓ‬௥ ή ͲǤͷ͵ͳ ൅ ‫ݓ‬௥ ή ‫ܫ‬௠ ή ͳǤͳͲ (1)
௥௔ௗ ஺ή௥௔ௗ
Fig. 2. Close-up photo at the hinges and springs connecting the blades to the
main shaft. Here wr is the rotor speed in rad/s and Im is the excitation
current.
With the blades used in the system the rotor speed II. CONTROL PRINCIPLES
matching maximum power of Pm = 10kW for a wind speed of
v = 9.5m/s. This gives an electrical frequency of fe = 42.0Hz. An overview of the system is seen in Fig. 4.
This fe means that the wind turbine cannot be connected to
the 50Hz grid. Such a connection with a synchronous
generator will after all be rather difficult while generator Wind direction
voltage, frequency and phase have to match the grid. If grid
connection is an issue the converter described in [5] can be Main sharfts Gearbox Generator Load
Measurements
Spring UI

used but then with another control system.

Hinge

Hinge
Spring
Pitch motor Exitation

Mechanical pitching:
When the blades bend a first order mechanical pitching is
also performed [1]. This tends to reduce the power from the
wind compared to a stiff system. This is described under
dynamic wind conditions in the later paragraph “Dynamic
wind conditions “.
December storm:
The advantages of the flexibly system was seen 3rd
December 1999 where the wind turbine produced power
through the storm. Here average wind speed of vv,avg = 38m/s
and wind burst op to vv,p = 50m/s was seen according to [6].
Synchronous Generator:
The turbine is equipped with a synchronous generator of P
= 10kVA from Marsalle Elektro Denmark. This is seen at the
back of Fig. 3.
Control system
Fig. 4. Schematic of the wind turbine including the control system.
The pitch motor controls the pitching with a shaft and a
worm drive inside the hollow main shaft. Signals from
bending, pitching, wind direction, wind speed and main shaft
speed is also given to the control system.
The control system operates in five different modes as
listed below and described right under:
• State 0, Condition for start-up of the wind turbine
• State 1, Free running with no control
• State 2, Frequency control due to magnetization
• State 3, Voltage control doe to pitching
• State 4, Emergency shot down

Fig. 3. At the back of the photo the synchronous generator is seen and in the
front the gearbox.
The generator is a 4 pole generator that depend on the
generator speed and excitation current can deliver a voltage
up to U = 400Vff,RMS. The excitation of the generator is done
with both permanent magnets and an excitation system. The
permanent magnets are used as excitation with low wind
speeds in order to charge the batteries used to supply the
control system under poor wind conditions. The ordinary
State 0:
Wind speed and wind direction are measured. When the
wind speed is larger than 5m/s the blocking is released and
when the blocking release signal is received the blades are
pitched 66% of the maximum angel. When the electrical
frequency reach fe = 15Hz the pitching continuous until the
pitch reached the maximum angle.
State 1:
As long as the electrical frequency is below the reference ff
= 42Hz nothing is done. In this state generator frequency and
voltage change with wind speed. The voltage is induced by
the permanent magnets. The state can be used to charge the
backup battery and to supply heating elements or other
equipment that do not depend on voltage and frequency.

978-1-5386-2344-2/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 State 2: Start
When the electrical frequency fg • 42Hz the control keep
the frequency by chanting the magnetization current to the Wind speed
f > 42Hz State 1
Vs > 5.0m/s
synchronous generator as (2). no no

yes yes
Release
Im=(fg–fr)ǜk1 for fg > fr (2) breake

Here the proportional gain k1 is found by experiments. Break

released no t b > 0.5s no
U > 230V
no
State 2

When the incoming wind power is larger than the power yes yes yes State 3

delivered to the load the difference is stored as mechanical Pitching Cot out

energy in the rotating system. Hereby the frequency increase Emergensy

stop no

but according to (1) the magnetization current can increase P-Ang > 0.66pu
no yes

also. Hereby the output voltage increase and the delivered yes
State 3

power to the load increases. In this state the frequency tends

f > 15Hz
to be nearly constant. A small variation is expected due to the no

proportional control. The generator voltage changes with the yes

Pitching
wind speed and the load due to the magnetization current.
Pitched in
no
State 3:
yes
When the generator voltage increases above the reference
Ur = 230Vf-0,RMS the pitch control takes over and control the Fig. 5. Schematic flow diagram of the control.
pitch angle Pib through the pitch motor according to (3).
the actuators. Transducers are connected to a signal
Pib=(Ug–Ur)ǜk2 for Ug >Ur (3) conditioning board and hereafter to a Lab view program that
In this state the intention is to keep the frequency and
voltage constant. Here the wind speed delivers more power Pitch angle
than the nominal power or the load of the system and the Wind direction Control with an
Interface

Interface
pitch is used to change the attack angle to keep the incoming PLC processor
Wind speed Digital Soft Break drive
power constant. Due to the proportional control and the delay
Break release Pitch drive
on reaction from the pitching the average voltage is
Voltage Memmory with
Magnetisation
controlled. a collection of
Current selected data

State 4: Lab view, National Instruments

State 4 is an emergency shot down state. Measurement of Data storage system

wind speed, generator voltage, generator current, and

frequency is done and if one of the parameters exceeds the
safety level the system is shut down. The shut-down is done
by removing all signals to the system. Mechanically the blade
is pitched to the zero position by the stored energy in the rotor
and the turbine stop. This procedure also insures that the
turbine is shut down if the power is lost to the control system.
Control flow diagram is seen in Fig. 5.
The left part in figure 5 is the start-up procedure. Here
0.66pu of the nominal pitch angle is set in the first step while
it is difficult to speed up the system with nominal pitch and
low rotational speed. When an electrical frequency of fe =
15Hz is reached a usable ratio of wind speed and blade tip
speed is reached hereafter the last part of the pitching is done.
The control setup:
The control setup is seen in Fig. 6.
The control system is implemented in a PLC from Digital
Soft supplied with an interface system for parameter
measurements. Another interface system connects the PLC to
Fig. 6. Interface, control and storage system
is used to store the measurements.
Dynamic wind conditions:
The above described control work well when the wind
speed gradient is small. In praxis wind bursts are expected
and these will have an influence on the control for such a
small wind turbine with a belonging small inertia. When an
increase in wind speed takes place the first action is taken
care of by bending the blades with the angle c together with
the belonging mechanical pitching angle d with a ratio of 1:1.
The mechanical power to the wind turbine with pitching can
be described as (4)
Pmec=k3ǜx3ǜpiǜ(rǜcos(c))2ǜ(1-k4(d)) (4)
Here x is the wind speed k3 is the perfomance coefficient
and k4 is the influence of the changed attack angle due to the
mechanical pitching. The mechanical pitching depend linear
on the bending and have a ratio so the mechanical power Pmec
still increase with increasing wind speed. When the blade

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bends the inertia decrease and the speed tend to increase. This
gives a centrifugal force that tends to decrease the bending
angle. In state 2 the magnetization current has to increase in
order to keep the frequency constant. If the wind burst takes
place in state 3 the control gives additional pitching according
to the generator voltage.
stable at 42Hz but the oscillating magnetization current Im and
hereby the generator voltage Ug indicates that the gain is large
and tend to make the system unstable.
The wind turbine concept in this paper is compared briefly
200
100

III. MEASUREMENTS 0
5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
2
Measurements from the wind turbine side are seen below.
Fig. 7, shows production with variable wind speed for 32s. At 1

the top the generator voltage Ug is seen. Diagram 2 from the 0

5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
top show the magnetisation current Im, diagram 3 shows the 50

40

30
5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
15
10
5
0
5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
time in s
Fig. 9. State 2. Magnetization of the generator for keeping the frequency at
the reference.
with a popular 10kW wind turbine Osiris 10. Fig. 10, shows
in red the power curve from Osiris and in blue power P to
wind speed v from the paper.
It is seen that the power curve from the wind turbine

Fig. 7. Example of power P production with variable wind speed.

generator frequency fG and at the bottom the wind speed v is

seen. A zoom from 20s to 25s is seen in Fig. 8.

200
100
0
20 20.5 21 21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25
2

0
20 20.5 21 21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25
50
Fig. 10. Power curve from Osiris 10 in read and measurements from the
40 turbine suggested in this paper.
30 described in the paper is less steep due to the reference wind
20 20.5 21 21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25
15 turbine. This has to do with the flexibility that reduce the
10 mechanical stress but as a little draw back loos some of the
5
power. This is the price to pay for the system.
0
20 20.5 21 21.5 22 22.5 23 23.5 24 24.5 25
time in s
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Fig. 8. State 1. No magnetization of the generator while frequency is below
42Hz. The paper describe a highly flexibly wind turbine that can
While the frequency fG is below 42Hz there is no be used at location with turbulence. The wind turbine has
magnetization. The generator voltage Ug is induced by the been exposed to high wind speeds and wind bursts as [6]
permanent magnets. For higher wind speed v the control enter without any mechanical damange. Measurements show that
state 2 and use the magnetization current Im to control the the suggested control system can be used to keep the
frequency fg. These are seen in Fig. 9. The frequency fg is frequency stable. The performance is compared to a standard

978-1-5386-2344-2/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

wind turbine at the same size. The result shows that the
suggested wind turbine have a power curve slightly below the
standard wind turbine due to the flexibly blades.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the new owner of the site where the wind
turbine is placed for the possibility to continue the research
needed for this paper.

REFERENCES

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Issue.2, p 476-484, 2010
[3] Nagai, M. Baku, Ameku, Kazumasa, Roy, Jitendro Nath, “Performance
of a 3kW wind turbine generator with variable pitch control system”,
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[4] N. Mendis, K. M. Muttaqi, S. Sayeef, S. Perera, “Standalone operation
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80, March 2001

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