Power generation control of a hydrostatic wind turbine implemented by model‐free adaptive control scheme

Abstract

Abstract The hydrostatic wind turbine (HWT) is a type of wind turbine that uses hydrostatic transmission (HST) drivetrain to replace the traditional gearbox drivetrain. Without the fragile and expensive gearbox and power converters, HWT can potentially reduce the maintenance costs owing to the gearbox and power converter failures in wind power system, especially in offshore cases. We design an MFAC torque controller to regulate the pump torque of the HWT and compared with an torque controller. Then we design an MFAC pitch controller to stabilise the rotor speed of HWT and compared with a gain‐scheduling proportional‐integral (PI) controller and a gain‐scheduling PI controller with antiwindup (PIAW). The results indicate that MFAC torque controller provides more effective tracking performance than the controller and that MFAC pitch controller shows better rotor speed stabilisation performance in comparison with the gain‐scheduling PI controller and PIAW.