Nonlinear Control of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Using Input/Output Feedback Linearization and Sliding Control

Input/ output feedback linearization and smoothed sliding control methods are used to control a floating offshore wind turbine on a barge platform in high wind speed in order to regulate the power capture. The model of the turbine has the blade pitch angle as the input, generator speed, platform pitch angle and its derivative as the measurements, and wind speed as a disturbance. The designed controllers have been applied to the simplified model of the plant which is used for controller design and also a more complex model which considers all six degrees of freedom for platform movements. Moreover, their performance is compared with the baseline controller for floating offshore wind turbines [1]. Both nonlinear controllers have improved the power fluctuation compared to the baseline controller. Also, sliding control has been shown to have better performance than the input/ output controller, since it can consider the uncertainty of the disturbance signal in the controller design.