Robust Distributed Wind Power Engineering

Abstract

Harnessing wind energy is one of the pressing challenges of our time. The scale, complexity, and robustness of wind power systems present compelling cyber-physical system design issues.
We are developing a comprehensive computational infrastructure for programming distributed real- time embedded devices that collaborate to perform complex, time critical tasks. In contrast to traditional efforts that focus on programming-in-the-small, we emphasize programmability, robustness, longevity, and assurance. The design of the computational infrastructure is motivated by, and validated on, complex cyber-physical interactions underlying Wind Power Engineering. Traditional approaches to controlling wind turbines address performance optimization and individual turbine safety. Posing and solving the cooperative control problem at the level of an entire wind farm may significantly improve performance and longevity of wind farms. There are currently no high-level tools for expressing coordinated behavior of wind farms. Using our proposed cyber-physical system, the project aims to validate our thesis that integrated control techniques can significantly improve performance, reduce downtime, improve predictability of maintenance, and enhance safety in operational environments.

Wind energy in the US is the fastest growing source of clean, renewable domestically produced energy. Improvements in productivity and longevity of these clean energy sources, even by a few percentage points will have significant impact on the overall energy landscape and decision-making. Mitigating failures and enhancing safety will go a long way towards shaping popular perceptions of wind farms – accelerating broader acceptance within local communities. Given the relative infancy of ‘smart’ wind farms, the broader impact of the proposed effort cannot be overstated.

We aim to develop a comprehensive computational infrastructure for distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems, emphasizing key aspects of programmability, robustness, and assurance. We
are building ENSEMBLES, a layered programming infrastructure for DRE systems composed of a node programming model based on real-time Java for it’s portability and robustness, and a specialized macropro-gramming environment that stitches together different node actions through the use of a domain-specific language for high-level coordination. At the same time, we want in this project to address a unique set of cyberphysical challenges critical to Terrestrial Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) systems farm operation, leveraging our densely instrumented testbed. These challenges are: (i) HAWT Farm Performance optimization, (ii) Fault detection, prevention and mitigation, and (iii) HAWT Farm Programmability and Assurance.

Some of the preliminary results show that by directly instrumenting the blades with accelerometers it has been found that a small change of 2 degrees in the pitch in a single blade can produce a loss of up to 25% loss in the power of a turbine. The measurements in the pitch as it is done today in the housing of the turbine are not able to detect these changes. Another result is that a -10 to 10 degrees yaw error can change less than 2% in the output power but a 20% in the flap response causing damaging loads in the turbine

Award Number:  1136045

 

 

  • CPS Domains
  • Concurrency and Timing
  • Embedded Software
  • Real-time Systems
  • Energy
  • Systems Engineering
  • Real-Time Coordination
  • Resilient Systems
  • CPS Technologies
  • Foundations
  • Control
  • National CPS PI Meeting 2012
  • 2012
  • Poster
  • Academia
  • CPS PI MTG 12 Posters & Abstracts
Submitted by Jan Vitek on