An integrator based wind speed estimator for wind turbine control

In this paper, an integrator based method to estimate the effective wind speed in wind turbine systems is proposed. First, the aerodynamic torque was accurately estimated through a proportional gain based observer where the generator speed is the measured output of the system. The torque signal contains not only useful frequencies of the wind, but also high frequencies and the ones due to structural vibration. The useful information of the wind signal is low frequency. A spectral analysis permitted the determination of the useful frequencies. The high frequencies were then filtered before introducing the torque signal in the wind speed observer. The desired effective wind speed was extracted through an integrator based observer using the previously estimated aerodynamic torque. The strength of the method is to avoid numerical solutions used in literature of the wind speed estimation. The effectiveness of the proposed wind speed estimator and its use to control the generator speed has been tested under turbulent situations using the FAST software (Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence), for large scale Megawatt turbine.