Design and implementation of a control system for the Mesabi V27 wind turbine

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is the design and implementation of a control law for a Vestas V27 turbine. There are two motivations for this work. First, there is a rapidly growing industry to refurbish turbines and the proposed control design can be used to update V27 turbines to extend their operational life. Second, the proposed control design will be open-source thus enabling the V27 turbine to be used for research purposes. The thesis will first provide a review of traditional wind turbine control systems. Next the V27 turbine hardware, software, and design specification are described. A control system is then described that includes supervisory control and a SISO classical control for the rotor speed tracking controller. Experimental test results are presented using a V27 turbine installed at the Mesabi Range Community and Technical College.