Reducing tower fatigue loads by a co-ordinated control of the Supergen 2MW exemplar wind turbine

As wind turbines increase in size, the tasks being assigned to the controller increase and their design becomes more demanding; in particular, the controller may be required to reduce the tower fatigue loads. The basic approach to tower load fatigue reduction is to employ a tower feedback loop (TFL). It typically achieves a 4%-7% fatigue load reduction depending on the details of the wind turbine. In this paper, the concept of a co-ordinated (CCD) controller is analysed which aims to increase the tower fore-aft load reduction whilst simultaneously reducing the pitch activity