Observer-Based Disturbance Accommodation Control Strategy for Useful Lifetime Control and Structural Load Mitigation of Wind Turbines

Wind turbines undergo degradation due to various factors which induce stress, thereby leading to fatigue damage to various wind turbine components. In addition, the current increase in demand for electrical power has led to the development of large wind turbines, which result in increased structural loads, therefore, increasing the possibility of early failure due to fatigue load. This paper proposes a proportional integral observer (PI-Observer) based disturbance accommodation controller (DAC) with individual pitch control (IPC) for load mitigation to reduce components’ damage and ensure the wind turbine is operational for the expected lifetime. The results indicate a reduction in blades’ bending moments with a standard deviation of 15.9%, which positively impacts several other wind turbine subsystems. Therefore, the lifetime control strategy demonstrates effective structural load mitigation without compromise on power generation, thus, achieving a nominal lifetime control to inhibit premature failure.