LAUSR

LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) sensors provide preview measurements of wind speed in front of the device. This preview may be used to improve important aspects of the operation of wind turbines, such as structural load, while limiting the control effort. In this paper, a single model-based predictive controller, taking advantage of the incoming wind in advance LIDAR measurements, is applied to the generator torque reference of the wind turbine in order to reduce torsional shaft vibrations. The controlled system is tested in a simulation environment that reproduces a set of gusts and turbulent wind fields above the nominal, where the structural loads are higher. The performances obtained are compared with the baseline and with those extracted from a single model predictive controller version without disturbance previsualization. Then, the effect of the coherence between the effective wind estimated from the LIDAR measurements and the real wind is considered. The practical implementation is demonstrated on real-time controller prototypes applied to a Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulator that reproduces realistically the dynamic behavior of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5 MW reference wind turbine.