Princeton Satellite Systems research concerns with the development and demonstration of novel control methods for small vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWT) employing individual blade pitch and camber control. Camber control is accomplished with a trailing edge flap. This system will improve energy extraction efficiency, allow operation over wider ranges of wind speeds, be more tolerant of wind variations and permit the turbine to self-start. The pitch and camber control system will be integrated with the brushless permanent magnet generator control which will employ field weakening to improve the performance over a wide range of wind speeds. This may make the turbine suitable for regions with relatively low wind speed. An important area of research will be to determine the sensing needs of this system. Research will be conducted to determine the level to which sensors, s uch as blade local airspeed and angle of attack sensors, can be replaced by estimation. It is proposed to use unscented Kalman filters which can handle nonlinear models and also multiple models to reduce sensitivity to system uncertainties.
All of the proposed innovations contribute towards achieving the estimation and control goals in small VAWT. Furthermore, the technologies developed in this project are not specific to a particular VAWT design, and can be integrated with existing and future systems. It could also be used to augment capabilities of systems available in the market that do not incorporate these technologies.
Several programs are underway and these are listed below
Publications:
P. Bhatta and M. Paluszek Nonlinear estimation and control for small-scale wind turbines, in Proc. World Wind Energy Conference, 2007.