Individual pitch control of wind turbine based on loads estimation

The use of wind energy for generating electricity has been constantly and rapidly increasing over last few decades and this growth is expected to continue. In order to enable even greater role of wind energy in power production wind turbines’ sizes and rated powers must increase. As wind turbines grow in size they are subjected to extreme loads and fatigue caused by uniform turbulent winds. This prevents further growth of wind turbines. Therefore control methods that assure loads reduction become a necessity. In this paper methods for wind turbine loads reduction based on individual pitch control are explored. To overcome problems related to needed measurements of blade loads a method for their estimation based on loads measured on the fixed parts of the structure is proposed.