Posters

Abstract

Wind speed estimation is a commonly pursued goal in wind turbine control circles. Turbine behaviour is largely driven by wind speed and, naturally, the literature is prolifi c in methods for its measurement or estimation, as well as its use for control improvements. A well-established role of wind speed estimates in industrial practice is to serve as an input for the calculation of a blade pitch or generator torque feed-forward term which can improve the transient behaviour of a traditional controller based solely on generator speed feedback. Wind speed estimation methods are based on turbine models of varying complexity driven by generator speed, which is the measured variable par exellence. This obviously means that any term calculated from the estimated wind speed, although typically still referred to as feed-forward, is, in fact, feedback; which begs the question: how, then, is estimated wind speed feed-forward diff erent from traditional generator speed feedback? We try to formally answer this question here.