Design of an Integral Fuzzy Logic Controller for a Variable-Speed Wind Turbine Model

The demand for electricity is continuously growing around the world and thus the need for renewable and long-lasting sources of energy has become an essential challenge. Wind turbines are considered one of the major sources of renewable electricity generation. Therefore, there is a crucial demand for wind turbine model and control systems that are capable of precisely simulating the actual wind power systems. In this paper, an advanced fuzzy logic controller is proposed to control the speed of a wind turbine system. Initially, aero dynamical, mechanical and electrical models of two mass wind turbines models are derived. Analytical calculation of the power coefficient is adopted through a nonlinear function of six coefficients that mainly depends on pitch angle and tip speed ratio. The ultimate power output from the turbine can reach up to 50 % which is achieved at zero pitch angle with an approximately tip speed ratio of eight. This is then followed by designing a hybrid fuzzy-plus I pitch controller to regulate the speed of the wind turbine shaft. In general, fuzzy logic control strategy have the advantages over traditional control techniques especially when the system is highly non-linear and has to deal with strong disturbances such as wind turbulence. To evaluate the reliability and robustness of the controller, the response of the wind turbine system is tested under several types of disturbances including wind fluctuation, sudden disturbances on high and low speed shafts. Simulation findings reveals that the performance of fuzzy-integral control technique outweighs that of conventional fuzzy approach in terms of multiple performance evaluation indexes such as zero overshoot and steady state error, rise time and a settling time of (32.9 s) (44.7 s) respectively. The reliability and robustness of the controller is tested by applying speed and torque disturbances of 25% of their maximum ranges. Results have revealed that the controller was able to reject all disturbances efficiently with a change in pitch angle up to a maximum of 10 degrees in order to retain a constant rotor speed at 1000 rpm.