A Two-Level Economic Health-Aware LPV MPC of a Wind Turbine

This paper considers the possibility of a direct incorporation of wind turbine prognostic information in the framework of model predictive control culminating in a Health Aware MPC design. The wind turbine blades, the chosen component of the study, are subjected to flapwise edge root moment, as a stress component, to acquire important prognostic information of degradation via the well-established stiffness degradation methodology. An optimization problem is solved by considering segmented degradation functions based on accumulated stress values on the blades. A two-level Linear Parameter Varying control scheme is proposed to allow for wind turbine control at different operating regions of wind and also to circumvent non-linearities in the MPC setup. The controller establishes a trade-off between standard wind turbine control objectives and the mitigation of component degradation concerning wind turbine blades. A 5 MW benchmark wind turbine is used as a case study for illustrative purposes.