Hybrid modelling and predictive control of utility-scale variable-speed variable-pitch wind turbines

Wind energy has proven to be the highest reliable source of renewables due to the maturity of the technology. Wind turbine (WT) systems are complex systems with undergoing development process that requires innovative methods of design and control. In this paper, WTs are studied through hybrid systems framework. Hybrid models of WT are extracted with representable dynamics from nonlinear complex design code. The WT model is formulated into a mixed-logical dynamical model (MLD) and a piecewise affine (PWA) model. Then, a receding horizon control strategy is applied to WT hybrid model resulting in a hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) with mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem. The performance of the proposed controller is compared against the baseline controller within a simulation environment for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5MW benchmark WT as a case study. The analysis and investigation of HMPC highlight its capability as a potential tool for exploiting the control objectives of WT systems.