CDTup, Control Design Tool Upgrade

◀ Back to projects overview P201101-014-ECN

Project description

ECN will modify the Control Design Tool (CDT), which is currently usable for 3-bladed turbines, to be useable for 2-bladed turbines and will add new developed control strategies.

Project summary

For reasons of the environment and future generations, the Dutch government has aimed to start a transition in short-term to a more sustainable way for the generation of electricity by utilizing (offshore) wind power. Offshore wind energy conversion will become economical if the costs of energy decreases and the risks for investments are acceptable. For this, further up scaling of wind turbines towards 10MW is necessary, because of the expensive foundation and installation costs in case of offshore locations. Additionally, due to the low accessibility for offshore locations, it is needed to improve the turbine reliability to achieve a high availability. A higher availability will also result in less unplanned maintenance (expensive) and gives improved guarantee of energy production. As a consequence, it is aimed to build large and efficiently offshore wind turbines in the future, which should be able to produce electrical energy during almost all circumstances and even in the presence of minor failures.

This project contributes significantly to the goal of reducing the Cost of Energy by developing, implementing and testing advanced wind turbine control algorithms. These algorithms control automatically the pitch angles of the blades and the electric torque of the generator in such a way that maximum power is generated at the least possible loading of important wind turbine components (blades, drive-train, nacelle, tower, etc.). The achieved load reduction allows for reduction of material cost and turbine up-scaling (larger rotor sizes). Moreover, load reduction also reduces failure rates and hence increases the technical availability of the turbine, reduces (unplanned) maintenance cost and prolong the lifetime.