Methods and systems to operate a wind turbine system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10100812-B2
Application number	US-201414319512-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 30, 2014
Priority date	Jun 30, 2014
Publication date	Oct 16, 2018
Grant date	Oct 16, 2018

Abstract

A wind turbine system is presented. The wind turbine system includes a wind turbine tower, a plurality of blades, a rotor supported by the wind turbine tower and rotatably coupled to the plurality of blades, a torque control device coupled to the rotor, and a control system programmed to predict an over-speeding time T of an occurrence of an over-speed rotor event based at least in part upon a current rotor acceleration and a current rotor speed, that cannot be compensated by an available counter-torque margin of the torque control device, and, in response, to generate pitch commands for the pitch angles of the plurality of blades to avoid the over-speed rotor event.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A wind turbine system, comprising:
a wind turbine tower;
a plurality of blades;
a rotor supported by the tower and rotatably coupled to the plurality of blades;
a torque control device coupled to the rotor; and
a control system programmed to predict an over-speeding time T of an over-speed rotor event that cannot be compensated by an available counter-torque margin of the torque control device, and, in response, to generate pitch commands for the pitch angles of the plurality of blades to avoid the over-speed rotor event, wherein the over-speeding time T is not predicted if the available counter-torque margin compensates the over-speed rotor event, and wherein the over-speeding time T is determined by an equation:

T
=

J
r

∂

M
Z

/

∂
Ω

⁢

ln
⁡

(

1
+

∂

M
Z

/

∂

Ω
⁡

(

Ω

ma
⁢

⁢
x

-

Ω

0
)

)

J
r

⁢

Ω
0

°

-

(

Q
g

ma
⁢

⁢
x

-

Q

g
⁢

⁢
0

)

)

wherein T is the over-speeding time, J r is rotor inertia, M Z is aerodynamic torque, ∂M Z /∂Ω is an aerodynamic sensitivity and a change in the aerodynamic torque with respect to a change in rotor speed, Ω max is a maximum allowable rotor speed of the rotor, Ω 0 is the current rotor speed,
 is current rotor acceleration, Q g max is a maximum available counter-torque, Q g0 is current counter-torque.

2. The wind turbine system of claim 1 , wherein the control system is programmed to predict the over-speeding time T of the occurrence of the over-speed rotor event without usage of wind speed data or wind speed related estimations.

3. The wind turbine system of claim 1 , wherein the control system is programmed to predict the over-speeding time T of the occurrence of the over-speed rotor event by:
predicting a future rotor speed at an input preview time T′;
predicting whether the rotor will be over speeding at the input preview time T′ by comparing the future rotor speed to a maximum allowable rotor speed; and
when the rotor is determined to over speed at the input T′, determining the over-speeding time T based at least in part on an assumption that a rotor speed at the over-speeding time T is equal to a maximum allowable rotor speed.

4. The wind turbine system of claim 3 , wherein the input preview time T′ is later than the over-speeding time T.

5. The wind turbine system of claim 1 , wherein the pitch commands are based at least in part on a determination of a minimum pitch angle alteration needed to avoid the over-speed rotor event.

6. The wind turbine system of claim 5 , wherein the control system is further programmed to, when generating the pitch commands, determine a rate of change in the pitch angles of the plurality of blades to achieve the minimum pitch angle alteration to avoid the over-speed rotor event by the over-speeding time T.

7. The wind turbine system of claim 6 , wherein the control system is programmed to determine the rate of change in the pitch angles of the plurality of blades based upon the minimum pitch angle alteration and the over-speeding time T.

8. The wind turbine system of claim 1 , wherein the control system is programmed to generate the pitch commands based at least in part on one or more analytical transfer functions that define the dynamics of the wind turbine system and one or more aerodynamic sensitivities.

9. The wind turbine system of claim 8 , wherein the control system is further programmed to generate the pitch commands based at least in part on the rotor inertia, the available counter-torque margin of the torque control device, a maximum rated counter torque of the torque control of the wind turbine system, a maximum allowable rotor speed, or combinations thereof.

10. The wind turbine system of claim 1 , wherein control system is programmed to predict the over-speeding time T of the occurrence of the over

Assignees

• Gen Electric

Inventors

• Deshpande Ameet Shridhar
• Agarwal Pranav

Classifications

• F05B2260/821

  Parameter estimation or prediction · CPC title

• F05B2270/1011

  to prevent overspeed · CPC title

• Y02E10/723

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• F05B2270/309

  Rate of change of parameters · CPC title

• F05B2270/327

  Rotor or generator speeds · CPC title