Enhanced Controllers to Improve Wind Farm Efficiency

Project Description

This project will model, develop and experimentally test novel wind farm controllers that will improve the efficiency of the existing fleet of Irish wind farms accounting for turbulent effects in the wake. The effects of rapidly changing wake aerodynamics due to turbulence will be considered in the wind farm models and controllers. The project will simulate, in real-time, the interaction of the controlled wind farms with the Irish electrical grid and will demonstrate increased wind farm energy yield from the existing fleet of Irish wind farms. The impact of the developed controllers on O&M strategies for wind farms will also be investigated. Traditionally the power output of each turbine in a wind farm is controlled independently. In this project novel controllers will be developed utilising hardware already installed on the wind turbines (i.e. yaw controllers, pitch controllers, torque controllers and power electronic devices) and they will cooperate with each other to optimise the wind farm's overall performance rather than optimising each turbine's individual performance. This project will simulate and study various wind turbine and wind farm scenarios in a real time system. The new controllers will be modelled and demonstrated using authentic wind farm data from real wind farms. The aim of the project is to increase the efficiency of Ireland's existing fleet of wind farms to obtain increased wind farm energy yield, increased wind turbine availability and longer wind farm life due to enhanced O&M practices.