New Overall Power Control Strategy for Variable-Speed Fixed-Pitch Wind Turbines Within the Whole Wind Velocity Range

Abstract

Variable-speed fixed-pitch (VSFP) wind turbines have good prospects in small-to-medium-scale wind power markets due to their simple structure, low cost, and high reliability. One difficulty with VSFP concept wind turbines is to prevent overspeeding and overloading problems at excessive wind velocities, which has rarely been reported in literatures until now. This paper first proposes a sensorless overall power control strategy for a commonly used permanent-magnet-synchronous-generator-based VSFP concept wind power system, with which maximum power point tracking operation, constant speed stalling operation, and constant power soft-stalling operation are all realized. The proposed control scheme has a special advantage of simple structure, i.e., only two regulators are used to realize the three operational modes and also the natural transition between them. An aerodynamic power observer is adopted in the proposed scheme to fasten the MPPT speed. In addition, to enhance system robustness to parameter variations and optimize dynamic and static speed-control performance, an adaptive PI-like fuzzy logic controller is proposed and used as speed regulator in the overall power control scheme. The proposed strategy is verified by simulation and experimental results performed by a 1.2-kW VSFP concept wind turbine prototype.