Study on a 3kW Small Wind Turbine Generator with Variable Pitch LQG Control System

Abstract

A prototype 3 kW wind turbine generator of 4 m in diameter has been designed and examined under real wind conditions. Two control methods have been applied: a variable blade pitch angle, and regulation of the generator field current. To improve the control program over a higher wind speed range, a LQG (Linear Quadratic Gaussian) control method with a wind model of low-pass filters was adopted for the pitch angle controller. This paper describes the LQG controller and shows numerical simulation results. The control program was able to vary the pitch angle and maintain an optimum rotational speed to prevent over rotation past 300 rpm.