2.

7 Modelling the Power Output of a Wind Turbine

By now, we have explained how to model input data, and described the algorithm logic used
to determine a probabilistic power flow.

There is one more topic to explain before we continue, and visualize the results of such a
power flow.

How can we translate the wind speed into wind output power so that we can use it in our
model?

In this video, we will first look at a way to mathematically model the active power generation
of a wind turbine based on the input wind speed.

Then, we will look at the inner and outer loops for controlling the reactive power output.

An easy way to model the active power generation, is by looking at a typical power curve for
a pitch-regulated wind turbine.

This is an important modelling block, as most of the time, you will be dealing with a software
that does not have a wind turbine model in itself, but rather requires the wind generated
power as an input.

You will need then to provide both the input wind data, and the mathematical model to map
these values into wind generation.

Now, let us explain this model.

For very low wind speeds, up until a certain cut-in speed, there is no power output from the
turbine.

The energy in the incoming wind is too low to overcome the turbine inertia.

You would also get no power output for very high wind values, above the cut-off speed.

At this point there is of course enough energy in the wind to rotate the turbine blades,
however, this is more of a safety precaution.

Very high rotation values could damage your components.

Between the cut-in and cut-out speeds, you have two zones.

The non-linear zone, and the constant power zone.

In the non-linear zone, between your cut-in and rated wind speeds, you make use of a certain
pitch control strategy.

You use the pitch of the blades of the turbine to harvest the most energy out of your incoming
wind to create the most possible active power output.
Between the rated wind speed, and the cut-off wind speed, you limit the harvesting from the
wind, again by using the pitch of the blades, as to keep a power output at its rated, safe limit.

If the wind speeds become too large, that is, too large to handle, then you shut your turbine
off.

This is why it is called a pitch-regulated wind turbine.

There are many ways to approximate this curve, and you see here on the screen one of these
methods, where the non-linear region is described with a third degree equation.

This model is available from this open-source paper, which can be found and downloaded
online.

You just need to google it.

There are of course other ways to model the power output of wind turbine, so keep in mind
that this is only one of them.

The important thing, is that using any of these methods, i can get the output power for a given
wind speed and then i can fit this value into my software.

Now, to discuss the reactive power generation.

Here is a typical schematic of the hierarchical control that used for this purpose.

Remember, we are at steady state in these situations.

You see here the inner control loop in green, and the outer control loop in gray.

The inner control is usually very fast, on the order of microseconds to a few milliseconds.

It takes care of the injection, for instance, of the reactive power during three-phase faults The
gray control area works on the order of a few seconds, even to a few minutes.

This is for instance, where you adjust the reactive power set point of the wind farm, rather
than just the instantaneous injection.

In short, the gray area controls your intended dispatch, the green area controls your
immediate response.

It is important to mention that when you are altering this set point, Qref, you could either
define it yourself, or modify your algorithm to calculate it for you.

This could be by defining the set point in terms of the power factor, or a droop control logic.

In what concerns our optimization problem, we simply take the reactive power value from the
power flow solution, and set it as Qref.
This value is given to the generator, and the generator should have a good inner loop control
so that you can comply with this set point at all times.

To conclude, in this video we talked about the mathematical modelling of the active power
output of a wind turbine, based on input wind data.

This generation output is the value of importance to fit into our models, to determine the
probabilistic power flow.

Then, we discussed the inner and outer loop controls for the turbine generators, and how
they control the reactive power output of your wind turbine.

We mentioned that for our optimization problem, there is no need for additional algorithms
to adjust the Qref value.

The control receives a Qref value, and complies with it.

Now that we have explained all the pieces of the puzzle, in the next video, we will finally look
at the results from a probabilistic power flow.