On Using Wind Speed Preview to Reduce Wind Turbine Tower Oscillations

We investigate the potential of using previewed wind
speed measurements for damping wind turbine fore-aft tower
oscillations. Using recent results on continuous-time H 2 preview
control, we develop a numerically efficient framework for the
feedforward controller synthesis. One of the major benefits of
the proposed framework is that it allows us to account for mea-
surement distortion. This results in a controller that is tailored
to the quality of the previewed data. A simple yet meaningful
parametric model of the measurement distortion is proposed and
used to analyze the effects of distortion characteristics on the
achievable performance and on the required length of preview.
We demonstrate the importance of accounting for the distortion
in the controller synthesis and quantify the potential benefits of
using previewed information by means of simulations based on
real-world turbine data.