Abstract

As the penetration of the wind energy into the electrical power grid is extensively increased, the influence of the wind turbine systems on the frequency and voltage stability becomes more and more significant. Wind turbine rotor bears different types of loads; aerodynamic loads, gravitational loads and centrifugal loads. These loads cause fatigue and vibration in blades, which cause degradation to the rotor blades. These loads can be overcome and the amount of collected power can be controlled using a good pitch controller (PC) which will tune the attack angle of a wind turbine rotor blade into or out of the wind. Each blade is exposed to different loads due to the variation of the wind speed across the rotor blades. For this reason, individual electric drives can be used in future to control the pitch of the blades in a process called Individual Pitch Control. In this thesis work, an enhanced pitch angle control strategy based on fuzzy logic control is proposed to cope with the nonlinear characteristics of wind turbine as well as to reduce the loads on the blades. A mathematical model of wind turbine (pitch control system) is developed and is tested with three controllers -PID, Fuzzy, and Adaptive Fuzzy-PID. After comparing all the three proposed strategies, the simulation results show that the Adaptive Fuzzy-PID controller has the best performance as it regulates the pitch system as well as the disturbances and uncertain factors associated with the system.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Wind turbines--Automatic control; PID controllers; Fuzzy logic

Publication Date

10-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Electrical Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Electrical Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Abdulla Ismail

Advisor/Committee Member

Ghalib Kahwaji

Advisor/Committee Member

Ziad Elkhatib

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

EEEE-MS

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