Reducing rotor speed variations of floating wind turbines by compensation of non‐minimum phase zeros

Abstract

Applying a land‐based designed pitch controller on a floating wind turbine may cause severe instability. A common strategy to overcome this problem is to reduce the closed‐loop bandwidth of the pitch control system. In doing so, the generator speed variation increases possibly leading to shutdowns because of overspeed. This study uses a parallel path modification to avoid instability without increasing the generator speed variation. The results of comprehensive simulations and load calculations carried out on a benchmark wind turbine are presented. These demonstrate that by using the proposed method it is possible to apply the land‐based designed pitch controller on its floater‐based equivalent.