Operating Strategies for Pitch Regulated

Turbines under Typhoons

PO.
126

Juihung Liu, Yen-Chieh Wang, Kun-Ru Xie and Jui-Tang Tseng

Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu,Taiwan

Abstract

Results

Tropical typhoons occur frequently in Asia area and causes serious wind
turbine damage in the past. The turbine to be installed and operated in this area
will always face threats from Typhoons. Thus, the importance of a reliable and
robust turbine control strategies become vital from turbine companies
perspective. Based on data of the strong typhoons pass Asian region in the
past, which the 10 minutes mean wind speed and 3 second gust both higher
than the design parameter (that is, 50m/s and 70m/s) of a Class IA offshore
wind turbine in IEC 61400-3 rev 3, a set of load cases for wind speeds higher
than the IA condition is constructed and is been taken as the input of a generic
offshore wind turbine. Load analysis to both typhoon and original DLC (design
load case) in extreme load were compared to estimate the impact of the turbine.
Finally, an operating strategy under typhoon was designed to reduce the
structure load. Compared the load with IEC IAs DLC, present idling strategy
show encouraged result to reduce the structure loads.
.

The certificated wind turbine simulation tool GH BLADED is used to generate

the typhoon wind condition and design the load case. The additional pitch
controller is implemented through the external controller interface of the
BLADED in the DLL format. Considering the typhoon operation conditions, IEC
DLC 6.x to 7.x for idling conditions were calculated both for standard class IA
and typhoon as listed in Table 1. The main concept of the present novel pitch
controller is based on the gain scheduling control. The control loop gain of the
pitch controller is decided by the blade characteristic and the rotor speed will be
taken as the major control loop reference under idling or parking operation.
Comparing fix pitch angle operation and close loop pitch control operation
through the ultimate load output, the result show below with close loop pitch
control can effectively reduce the ultimate load of the key components as
shown in Figure 1 to Figure 4, which the y axis is the percentage of the reduced
load to different components. Figure 5 to Figure 8 display the load distribution
of the ultimate load case in these components. It can be observed that not just
the maximum load been reduced, but also the entire load variation. That means
the fatigue load to the structure can be improved.
.
50%

Parameter

Iref

(Offshore)

70m/s

70m/s

Load reduction

30%
25%
20%
15%

30%
20%

0%

0%
Blade root Mx

Blade root My

Blade mid Mx

Blade root Mxy

Figure 1. Pitch Load reduction

60%

70%

50%

60%

Load reduction

80%

40%
30%
20%

Typhoon

40%
30%
20%

Tower top Mz

Tower bottom
Mxy

0%
Hub Fx

50m/s

50m/s

50m/s

16000

fix pitch
pitch control

60m/s

0.16

0.16

0.2

0.14

0.18
0.14

0.23

12000

8000

6000

4000

0.26

-1

2000

Tower &
Blade
Gearbox
foundation

ETM

EOG

EDC

ECD

Load output: within IEC partially exceed IEC mostly exceed IEC

-3

100

Rating (MW) 5

200

300
time (sec)

400

500

600

-2000

Figure 5. Pitch Moment x

10

20

30
time (sec)

40

50

60

Figure 6. Blade Moment y

Rotor Configuration 3-blades

4

x 10

Rotor diameter (m) 126

fix pitch
pitch control

4
2

Rotor speed (rpm) 6.9~12.1

Tower mass (ton) 347

Methods
The load simulation result in Table 2 shows that the wind turbine needs to redesign for typhoon to protect the wind turbine. For a new wind turbine, one can
modifies the design parameters in IEC/GL guideline or just the safety factors to
reinforce the structure strength such that they can survive from the typhoon
load. For the existing turbines or one who tries to lower the manufacturing cost
instead, advanced operation or control strategy may be another way to
suppress the structure load. Nowadays, wind turbine turns into idle or park
condition when the average wind speed exceeds the default cut out wind speed.
Of course, turbines idled when typhoon coming. Usually, in idling condition, the
turbine controller will fix the pitch to the feathered angle as to minimize the
power coefficient (C p ) as well as the resultant aerodynamic torque. To
accomplish the advanced control objectives, multivariable control may
substantially improve the regulation. And the blade moment, hub moment and
tower acceleration could be regarded as disturbance signal. Here, a novel pitch
controller to regulate the pitch angle continuously is designed with different
feedback information to minimize the torque and speed error during high wind
speed region.
.

2
1
0

Rotor mass (ton) 110

Nacelle mass (ton) 240

fix pitch
pitch control

Hub height (m) 90

Cut-in/ Cut-out (m/s) 3/ 25

x 10

Hub My (kNm)

Drive
train

Table 3. Turbine Specs.

Tower My (kNm)

Yaw
system

fix pitch
pitch control

14000

10000

Wind shear exponent

Hub Mz

x 10

Table 2. Typhoon load simulation to key components

EWS

Hub My

Characteristic turbulence
intensity

Hub Mx

Figure 4. Hub Load reduction

-2

EWM

Blade mid Mz

50%

Figure 3. Tower Load reduction

5

50-year extreme wind

speed (10min mean)

Wind
Pitch
condition system

Blade mid Mxy

10%
Tower top My

84m/s

Blade mid My

Figure 2. Blade Load reduction

70%

0%

70m/s

40%

10%

5%

10%

GL-Offshore

50%

Pitch My (kNm)

Vref

(Onshore)

35%

10%

pitch Mx (kNm)

Ve50

50-year extreme wind

speed (3s mean)

IEC 61400-3 IA

60%

40%

Table 1. Wind design condition in IEC/GL and Typhoon [1-4]

IEC 61400-1 IA

70%

45%

Load reduction

Operation load control of a wind turbine under extreme wind conditions is the
focus of the present article, especially tropical cyclones that happen frequently
among east Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China and Philippine.
Many historical typhoon cases from the above countries reported severe
damages in blades, towers and even whole turbines show typhoons can exert
unexpected loads to the turbine structure. Table 1 collects the historical
typhoon wind data and compare to wind condition listed in IEC 61400-1&3 and
GL. It shows great differences between standard international guidelines and
typhoon conditions. The load simulation also show that many key components
subject to abnormal extreme load as summarized in Table 2. Thus, we propose
and design a pitch control strategy to reduce the load under such extreme wind
condition while wind turbine operated in idling or parking situation. The
designated turbine system specification is briefly listed in Table 3.
.

Load reduction

Objectives

-1
-1
-2
-2

10

20

30
time (sec)

40

50

60

-3

Figure 7. Tower Moment y

100

200

300
time (sec)

400

500

600

Figure 8. Hub Moment y

Conclusions
The proposed pitch regulation strategy effectively reduces the structure load
when typhoon hits the wind turbine, especially the moment along y axis for
45%~70% load reduction effect among pitch, blade, tower and hub. Along x axis,
this load reduction effect is around 20%, while z axis shows merely slight effect.
The proposed strategy and the simulation result concludes that during idling and
parked condition of the wind turbine, there exist some sensors information could
be used for control reference to increase stability. However, in the real
application the actuator constrain will restrict system performance finally. In the
future, the detailed analysis to the whole system and an additional brake control
system will be considered to retard the ramp brake load.
.
References
1. International standard IEC 61400-1: Wind turbines-Part 1: Design requirements, 3rd edition, 2005.
2. International standard IEC 61400-3: Wind turbines-Part 3: Design requirements for offshore wind turbines, Edition 1.0, 2009.
3. Guideline for the Certification of Offshore Wind Turbines, Germanischer Lloyd, 2005.
4. Proposal on IEC 61400-1 from Japan, Tetsuya KOGAKI, AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology)
5. GH Bladed User Manual, version 3.82, 2009.

EWEA OFFSHORE 2011, 29 November 1 December 2011 , Amsterdam, The Netherlands