Ensuring Safe Exploitation of Wind Turbine Kinetic Energy : An Invariance Kernel Formulation

• Main Author: Rawn, Barry Gordon
• Other Authors: Maggiore, Manfredi
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: invariance kernel; planar systems; kinetic energy; wind turbine; stability; smoothing; inertia; frequency regulation; 0544; 0791
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/24376

This thesis investigates the computation of invariance kernels for planar nonlinear systems with one input, with application to wind turbine stability. Given a known bound on the absolute value of the input variations (possibly around a fixed non-zero value), it is of interest to determine if the system's state can be guaranteed to stay within a desired region K of the state space irrespective of the input variations. The collection of all initial conditions for which trajectories will never exit K irrespective of input variations is called the invariance kernel. This thesis develops theory to characterize the boundary of the invariance kernel and develops an algorithm to compute the exact boundary of the invariance kernel. The algorithm is applied to two simplified wind turbine systems that tap kinetic energy of the turbine to support the frequency of the grid. One system provides power smoothing, and the other provides inertial response. For these models, limits on speed and torque specify a desired region of operation K in the state space, while the wind is represented as a bounded input. The theory developed in the thesis makes it possible to define a measure called the wind disturbance margin. This measure quantifies the largest range of wind variations under which the specified type of grid support may be provided. The wind disturbance margin quantifies how the exploitation of kinetic energy reduces a turbine's tolerance to wind disturbances. The improvement in power smoothing and inertial response made available by the increased speed range of a full converter-interfaced turbine is quantified as an example.