Importance of Dynamic Inflow in Model Predictive Control of Wind Turbines

The efficiency of including dynamic inflow in the model based design of wind turbine controller has been discussed for many years in the wind energy community with out getting to a safe conclusion. This paper delivers a good argument in favor of including dynamic inflow. The main contributions are the use of a very simple inflow model, developed by one of the authors and the use of Pareto fronts to facilitate a safe conclusion. The approach is to compare MPC controllers designed with respectively without including dynamic inflow for a mean wind speed just above rated where this dynamics are most pronounces. For this the well accepted NREL 5MW reference turbine simulated with FAST is used. The main result is a reduction in tower fatigue load at 22% while power error, rotor speed error, generator torque and pitch rate is improved from 2 to 33%.