Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

On using Pareto optimality to tune a linear model predictive controller

for wind turbines
Peter Fogh Odgaard a, *, 1, Lars F.S. Larsen b, Rafael Wisniewski a, Tobias Gybel Hovgaard b
a
Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark
b
Vestas Wind Systems a/s, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Optimal operation of wind turbines is important in order to minimize cost of energy, which is one of the
Received 11 March 2015 major focus areas of the wind industry. Model predictive control (MPC) is a candidate for a control so-
Received in revised form lution which effectively balances the different and potentially conicting objectives, e.g. generated power
23 September 2015
and structural loads. This article presents a method on how to tune multi-objective MPC problems using
Accepted 28 September 2015
Available online 9 October 2015
Pareto curves. The approach is applied to a realistic wind turbine MPC problem, in which a joint power
and tower fore-aft fatigue load optimization is performed. The controller is evaluated on a high delity
model using a Vestas wind turbine simulator. In addition to the multiple control objectives, a number of
Keywords:
Wind turbine control
constraints are considered as well. The evaluation shows a good potential of using model predictive
Model predictive control control for this problem compared with an industrial baseline controller as, it approximately obtains the
Power and structural fatigue load same mean generated power, while lowering the tower fore-aft fatigue loads. The computed Pareto
curves of the trade-off between tower fore-aft fatigue load and mean generated power for a number of
different weight matrices, demonstrate a potential tool for tuning MPC solutions for a wind turbine.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Reducing cost of energy has been a continued focus for the wind
turbine industry over the last years. This naturally drives the in-
terest in optimizing power generation while keeping structural
loads under levels given by the design of the wind turbine struc-
tures. A solution to this joint optimization has importance in the
entire operational range of the wind turbine. The largest impact is,
however, in the switch region between partial load and full load
operation as the thrust is highest here. The thrust depends on the
wind speed and the pitching. In partial load operation, the blades
are pitched at their optimal position. Consequently, the highest
thrust are obtained at the highest wind speed in the partial load
region, which is at the switching point between partial and full load
operation. Partial load refers to operation below rated wind speed
in which the wind turbine tries to optimize the power generation,
* Corresponding author. Aalborg niversity, Automation & Control, Fredrik
Bajersvej 7, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark.
E-mail addresses: pfo@es.aau.dk (P.F. Odgaard), lfsla@vestas.com (L.F.S. Larsen),
raf@es.aau.dk (R. Wisniewski), togho@vestas.com (T.G. Hovgaard).
1
The work is supported by the Vestas Wind Turbine Control Program at Aalborg
University.
while full power refers to operation above rated wind speed of
which the nominal power is generated. In the joint optimization
problem, minimizing fatigue loads on the tower while maximizing
power generation are conicting objectives. In addition to opti-
mizing the wind turbine performance with respect to the objec-
tives, the controller is also required to operate within a number of
constraints on control actuators and system states. MPC has pre-
viously shown to be a candidate to solve this optimization problem,
but relative weighting of the different objectives in the optimiza-
tion problem has proved to be difcult.
Model predictive control is often applied to multi-objective
control problems, where relevant weights on the different objec-
tives can be found either up front or during a tuning process. MPC
seems to be a good solution to control design for such problems
seen from an academic point-of-view, as it under certain conditions
gives the optimal control solution, given the specied problem.
However, from an industrial point-of-view the tuning of the
weights can, however, be challenging as many industrial control
applications have multiple conicting objectives. Furthermore, the
objectives used in the evaluation of a plant's performance are often
not fully included in the cost function formulation used in the MPC
solution. Thus, the weights somehow have to reect higher level
objectives used in the evaluation of the control system. This leads to

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2015.09.067
0960-1481/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891 885

problems when tuning the controller, where the performance de- In Ref. [5], a robust model predictive controller is designed and
pends on the trade-offs between the different control objectives. demonstrated using a Vestas high delity wind turbine simulation
For this situation, it can be helpful to draw the Pareto front, where model. The used prediction model is based on data driven system
each point on the front corresponds to a specic combination of the identication using simulation data from this high delity model.
weights. Based on the same prediction model, a nominal model predictive
In this article, an approach for tuning an MPC solution for a wind controller is computed. In this article, we apply the proposed Pareto
turbine based on the Pareto front between power and structural front based tuning approach to this MPC design and the Vestas
tower loads is proposed. The approach uses the gradient of the simulation model. The MPC performance with respect to generated
Pareto front to nd weights which gives a balanced trade-off be- power and relevant fatigue loads are computed for different rela-
tween the different weights. This is a novel approach for tuning of tive weightings of power generation and tower fore-aft velocity.
MPC solutions. The fatigue loads are evaluated using Damage Equivalent Loads
Model predictive control for wind turbines has been the focus in (DELs). In this article, it is investigated how different weightings in
a considerable number of scientic publications. In Ref. [1] a pole the cost function inuence the performance of mean Power, tower
placement based tuning of an MPC for switch less control of wind fore-aft DEL and blade ap and edgewise DEL. These data are used
turbines, with respect to partial and full load operation, is reported. to generate a number of Pareto curves showing the relation be-
A Full Load Control (FLC) without wind speed predictions was re- tween generated power and the respective DEL values. We use the
ported in Ref. [2] and with wind speed predictions based on LIDARS Pareto curves to select the tuning of the MPC to provide the desired
in Refs. [3,4]. Switchless control considering tower fore-aft trade-off between the DELs and the generated power. We present
displacement is the focus of [5], in which a data driven model is an approach to obtaining this tuning where the gradients in rele-
used for the prediction. In Ref. [6], it is shown that with a perfect vant Pareto fronts are used to nd the best tuning.
wind estimation, MPC can lead to high load reductions. This work In Section 2, the proposed Pareto based tuning is presented and
has been evaluated using the aero-elastic code Flex5, see Ref. [7]. in Section 3, the used wind turbine system and model is introduced.
Non-linear MPC has been used to tackle the non-linearities in the The evaluated wind turbine MPC is presented in Section 4. The
wind turbine in Refs. [8e10]. In Ref. [11], feedback linearization is evaluation of Pareto fronts is presented in Section 5 where the
used to turn the nonlinear problem into a linear problem and Pareto fronts are also related to the wind turbine design process.
subsequently a linear MPC solution is applied. In both [12] and [13], Section 6 presents the obtained Pareto curves, which are analyzed
robust MPC algorithms are designed for different robustness issues and discussed. Conclusions are given in Section 7.
in the wind turbine application. Smooth transitions between partial
and full load control has been addressed using MPC in Refs. [14,15].
2. Pareto optimality based MPC tuning
The rst is evaluated with the HAWC2 turbine simulator and in-
cludes dynamic inow in the design. The latter considers tower
The MPC formulation provides an optimal control signal given
fore-aft displacements of a oating wind turbine [16]. uses MPC to
the control problem. In the case of multi-objective control prob-
design an alternative individual pitch control scheme. MPC has
lems, the ratio between the different weights used in the cost
been used for accommodating extreme loads and actuator limits in
function will balance the different control objectives. If a sweep of
Ref. [17]. In Ref. [18], MPC is used to handle the repetitive nature of
weight ratios between the objectives is performed, one or more
the wind turbine, in terms of handling, e.g., wakes which partly
Pareto front(s) are computed. A simple case of this situation is
covers the rotor eld. This results in the same load reductions as
present if only two performance objectives are evaluated, and the
with an IPC algorithm but with less pitch activity. Explicit Model
corresponding weights are scaled with factors r and (1
r). A Pareto
Predictive Control for Wind Turbines was covered in Ref. [19],
curve is illustrated in Fig. 1. In this case a simple linear prediction
which lowers the computational complexity of the MPC algorithm.
model with linear constraints and a quadratic cost function is
The work presented in this article, provides essential contribu-
formed. The performance in terms of power generation and costs, is
tions to the existing literature on wind turbine MPC. The idea of
evaluated based on a high delity model using a complicated cost
using Pareto Fronts as a systematic tuning approach for a wind
function.
turbine MPC solution is new, and provides a substantial tool for
The simplied model used in the MPC setup is a linear model
designing wind turbine controllers based on the MPC methods.
linearized for a number of optimal points of operation depending
Selection of the weights in the cost function is a known problem in
general for MPC applications, and at least in the case of wind tur-
bines, the proposed tuning approach has shown great potentials.
Secondly, the proposed MPC solution is benchmarked towards an
industrial based wind turbine controller on an industrial aero-
elastic simulation code.
Two actuators are normally used to control the power genera-
tion of a wind turbine. These are; the generator torque and the
collective pitch angle of the blades. The rst actuator is used to
control the wind turbine until the rated power is reached. The
turbine keeps the blade pitch angles at an optimal value, and when
rated power is obtained, the generator torque is kept constant
while the pitch angles are used to manipulate the airfoils. Thereby,
the generated aerodynamic torque is maintained constant, and the
rotor speed is kept at its rated value [20]. In addition to be used to
control the rotor speed, the pitch angles also alters the thrust force
on the rotor and thus, inuence the tower fore-aft displacement
and velocity. Consequently, the pitch angle can be used to control
the tower fore-aft movements and thereby reduce the fatigue loads Fig. 1. Illustration of the Pareto Curves obtained by the performance evaluations
on it at the cost of decreased power generation. depending on r.
886 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891
on the wind speed. Thus, the prediction model is on the form:
xk 1 Av xk Bv uk; yk Cv xk; (1) limited information on the model and the wind turbine. The pro-
in which (Av,Bv,Cv) is the set of model matrices for the wind speed v,
u is the vector of manipulable inputs and x and y are the predicted
states and outputs, respectively. The cost function C[n] is given as
Cn un
unom nT ,R,un
unom n evaluation of the MPC solution. Pareto curves are generated by
xn
xnom nT ,Q ,xn
xnom n; (2) plotting the different wind turbine DELs versus the mean generated
where R and Q are the weight matrices weighting control signal
errors and state errors respectively, xnom is the nominal state
reference vector, unom is the nominal control reference vector.
This model and cost function is the controller's simplied
version of the more detailed model used for performance evalua-
tion. As an example, the cost function used for evaluation is much
more complicated and is of a very different nature then the one in
Eq. (2), as it computes the actual equivalent loads of the wind
turbine L and the average generated power P.
2.1. Gradient based MPC tuning
A tuning method based on Pareto curves uses the gradient of the
Pareto curves, which depicts L(P) as a mapping of P, to select an
optimal tuning and selection of Q and R. Dene this gradient as
f dL/dP. It is assumed in this that L(P) has one single minimum or
is increasing. The used L(P) mapping is the respective DEL values as
functions of P. The used denition of the gradient means that the
gradient will be low if the increase in the mean power is high while
the increases in the respective DELs are low. The gradient will in-
crease as the DELs increase relative to the generated power.
A tuning of the weight matrices through the scaling parameter r
should be selected such that f is small, smaller than a given small
valued parameter k. This means that,
f < k; (3)
dL
< k; (4)
dP
dL
dP > : (5)
k
By selecting an MPC tuning which fullls this, a tuning is found
which gives the highest value of the income related objective
(power) without generating large increases on the cost related
objectives (loads).
This means that as long as the gradient is low it makes sense to
increase the generated power levels by increasing the value of r. If
the gradient increases to a higher value this means that the
generated power is increased with a small amount at the cost of
large additional DEL values.
In the following, the gradient for the tower fore-aft mode as a
function of the mean power is dened as ffa. This gradient should
subsequently be analyzed with respect to the inequalities given in
(3e5). The absolute values of the Pareto curve should be considered
as well in this process, e.g. if the fatigue load is very low, the
gradient of it might not be of high importance.
3. Wind turbine system and model
The intention of this work has been to benchmark MPC solu-
tions with industrial state-of-the-art controllers on an industrial
state-of-the-art wind turbine simulator. The evaluation has been
performed on a Vestas proprietary high delity wind turbine
model. Due to condentially reasons the authors can only share
posed MPC tuning method is sufciently generic to be applied to
other wind turbine MPC solutions, as long as they weight both
generated power and fatigue loads in the cost function.
The Vestas high delity wind turbine model is used for the
simulation of the different controllers and load cases used in the
power.
The model used in the MPC solution is a data driven model
identied using simulated wind turbine operation from the Vestas
high delity model. This model represents the states, inputs and
outputs used in the prediction model described in the MPC design,
see Section 4.
In this work a number of the degrees of freedom available in the
simulation model are used for analysis of the fatigue loads. They
are: tower fore-aft and sideways modes, tower yaw mode, blade
ap wise and edgewise modes, and blade bearing mode. All these
modes, except for the blade bearing, are illustrated in Fig. 2, which
contains illustrations of a wind turbine seen from the side, front
and top. The tower fore-aft and blade ap wise modes are illus-
trated by Fig. 2a which shows the wind turbine from the side, and
the tower sideways and blade edgewise modes are illustrated by
Fig. 2b which shows the wind turbine from the front. The tower
yaw mode is illustrated in Fig. 2c. The blade bearing mode, repre-
sents the moments inicted on the blade bearings, and gives an
indications of the pitch activity. The DELs for the respective modes
are computed using a data post processing tool which uses a rain
ow counting based method provided in the Vestas wind turbine
simulation software.
4. Wind turbine model predictive controller
The controller used in this work is designed to optimize power
generation P, while lowering the tower fore-aft DEL. The latter is
computed in a post process evaluation, and therefore it cannot be
included in the control objective. An approximate way to include
the tower fore-aft DEL in the objective function and prediction
model is to strive to minimize the tower fore-aft velocities. The
controller structure and prediction model is the same as obtained
in Ref. [5]. The prediction and control model comprises a three state
model, in which one state represents the squared generator speed,
one state the fore-aft displacement and one the fore-aft velocity.
The controller calculates two control signals; the collective pitch
reference and the generator power reference. A state vector is
dened as x(n) and a vector of the control signals is dened as u(n).
Notice the squared generator speed is used, since it is proportional
to the kinetic energy in the wind turbine rotor. The used MPC al-
gorithm is a receding horizon scheme with constraints; the
nonlinear problem in the wind turbine is dealt with by having a set
of different linear models for different mean wind speeds. The MPC
algorithm then switches between the relevant models in its opti-
mization. We use the models obtained in the work by Evans [5], in
which linear state space models are identied at different opera-
tional points depending on the wind speed.
In the following, the used model predictive controller will be
specied in terms of the used model, the objective function, and the
constraints.
4.1. Objective function
The purpose of the objective function is to weight the objectives
and requirements of the controller. First the objective, C(n) (see (2)),
 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891 887

Fig. 2. Wind turbine from side, front and top to illustrate tower fore-aft and sideways modes, Blade apwise and edgewise modes and Tower Yaw Mode.

is dened as in Ref. [5], and the terms in it are dened and

 
explained in relation to the controller requirements in the br n
un ; (7)
following: Pr n
First dene a state vector.
where br(n) is the pitch reference, and Pr(n) is the power reference.
A set of nominal state vector, xnom(n), and nominal control
2 3 vector, unom(n), are subsequently dened as
dn
4 _
xn dn 5; (6) 2 3
0
u2 n xnom n 4 0 5; (8)
u2opt n
in which d(n) is the tower fore aft displacement, and dn_ is the
tower fore aft velocity, and u(n) is the generator speed. The two rst entries in this vector are the tower displacement
A vector of the control signals is dened as and velocity. In the nominal state vector, they are set to zero, as this
888 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891
represents the ideal position of the wind turbine in these elements.
The last element in this vector is set to the squared optimal speed,
in relation to obtaining the optimal power based on a state opti-
mization performed outside the MPC loop in order to weight a
partial load performance which is close to optimal performance.
 
bopt n
unom n ; (9)
Popt n
Both elements in this vector are used to weight the optimal
power production of the turbine.
The weight matrices R and Q are used to weight the difference in
the x
xnom and u
unom, respectively. In order to specify and opti-
mize the controller in relation to the controller objectives with
respect to power generation and tower fore-aft fatigue load re-
ductions, P
Popt and d_ are weighted higher relative to the
remaining states and inputs.
The R and Q matrices used are
 
10 0
R (10)
0 0:5
2 3
0 0 0 using the baseline controller.
Q 40 0:2 05 (11)
0 0 3 10
The cost function is optimized using u(n) for the entire control
horizon Tc.
4.2. Used constraints
The following constraints are used in the design of the MPC
solution, (for additional details see Ref. [5]).
Generator speed constraint:
0:75,u2gen;opt n  u2gen n  1:25,u2gen;opt n; (12)
in which ugen(n) is the generator speed, and ugen,opt(n) is the
optimal generator speed based on the wind speed. This constraint
keeps the generator speed within a band around the optimal
generator speed. The constraint on ugen is set as a hard constraint as
the maximal generator speed due to safety consideration is not
allowed to be violated. The used generator speed constraints are,
however, set relatively high in order to allow some variations in the
generator speed, which is realistic and feasible as long as the
constraint is lower than the actual maximum speed of the wind
turbine with a reasonable margin. Pitch constraint:
bmin n < bn < 90+ ; (13)
where b(n) is the collective pitch reference, and bmin(n) is the
minimum pitch angle allowed in order to avoid stall. This minimum
pitch angle is computed using a precomputed in a static table/
function, which depends on the specic design of the wind turbine
blade. The constraint ensures that the wind turbine blade does not
stall due to too low pitch angles. Power constraint:
0  Pe n  Pe;max ; (14)
where Pe(n) is the generated electrical power at sample n, and
Pe,max is the maximal allow generated power. This constraint is in
this work set 2% higher than the power reference. The constraint
ensures that the generated power is positive and below the
maximal value, as it allows smaller uctuations above the nominal
power.
We dene the optimization problem solved in the MPC solution
as,
X
N
minimize Cn; (15)
n
1
Subject to the constraints given in: (12)e(14),
xn 1 Axn Bun: (16)
where C(n) is dened in (2).
5. Pareto evaluation of wind turbine model predictive
controller
An internal Vestas high delity simulation model is used for the
simulations. Three mean wind speed load cases are considered,
these are 10 m/s, 12 m/s and 14 m/s. The basic idea is to investigate
how changes in the Q and R matrices will inuence the Pareto
optimal control problem. In order to investigate the Q and R
matrices, they are redened to include one tuning parameter: r.
Next, the load cases are computed for different values of r, such that
Pareto optimality curves can be found as functions of r. In the plots
all computed values are shown relatively to the values obtained
 
0
R (17)
0 0:5,r
2 3
0 0 0
Q 40 0:2,1
r 05 (18)
0 0 3
In the analysis, r is used as a tuning parameter, such that
different controllers weights power generation higher as r in-
creases. A number of Pareto curves are included in the evaluations
in which different computed DELs are compared with the mean
generated power for three different load cases, depending on the
tuning parameters. The DELs are computed by the Vestas software,
and corresponds to DELs of the tower fore-aft, tower sideways,
blade ap-wise, blade edgewise, yaw and blade bearing. All
numbers in the curves are normalized with the numbers obtained
by an industrial baseline controller designed for the specic wind
turbine. The normed values are obtained by
JMPC
; (19)
JBC
where JMPC are the respective mean power and DELs for the
MPC solution and JBC are the respective mean power and DELs for
the industrial baseline controller. Consequently, the task is to nd
an acceptable trade-off between the generated power and the DELs.
In the following, we will an approach to using the obtained Pareto
curves to tune the MPC solution by selecting r and thereby Q and R.
6. Evaluation results
In this Section, the simulation results are evaluated. Three mean
wind load cases are considered; 10 m/s, 12 m/s and 14 m/s as they
are covering most of the load cases with changes in operation from
partial load to full load. Each mean wind speed is represented by
two gures. The rst gure depicts the Pareto curve of the tower
fore-aft DEL with respect to the mean generated power, and the
gradient of this Pareto curve, and the second shows a spider plot of
the remaining DELs (tower sideways, blade ap-wise, blade Edge-
wise, yaw and blade bearing), relative to the baseline controller.
The 10 m/s mean wind load case in Fig. 3 shows that the mean
power for all the different values of r are lower than the baseline
 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891
Fig. 3. Pareto curve for the Tower fore-aft DEL vs. mean generated power for load cases
with 10 m/s mean wind speed, and gradient of the same curve.
controller's mean power. the highest value obtained results in a
factor 0.995 compared to the baseline. This could be improved if the
generator speed error relative to the optimal speed was weighted
higher, as this load case includes relatively long periods where the
wind turbine is operating below rated speed. On the other hand, it
is also seen that the tower fore-aft DEL is slightly reduced
compared with the baseline controller for all values of r. It can also
be seen that increased mean power results in increased tower fore-
aft DELs. It is seen that the gradient based tuning indicates that the
best tuning is the one with the MPC generating power at a level of
0.993, as this tuning obtains the highest power while still having
gradient close to zero. Selecting the tuning with an even higher
power level, like 0.995 results in an increase in the value of the
gradient, which means that minor increases in power generation
result in high fatigue load increases. The spider plot of the other
evaluated DELs in the 10 m/s load case can be seen in Fig. 4, from
which it can be seen that this tuning results in a slight increase in
the pitch bearing DEL and decrease in the tower side to side DEL
whereas, the three other DELs are at the same level as the baseline
Fig. 4. Spider plot of DELs (Tower sideways, Blade ap-wise, Blade Edgewise, Yaw and
Blade Bearing) for the 10 m/s mean wind speed. The blue solid curve is the MPC and
green dashed dotted curve is the baseline controller. (For interpretation of the refer-
ences to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
889
controller. The load case of 12 m/s mean wind, shown in Fig. 5, is
the best case to evaluate the handling of the switching between
partial and full load operation of this MPC design. The Pareto curve
for tower fore-aft loads and mean power shows an expected shape
with increasing loads as the power increases when r is increasing.
It can be seen that with this design, the mean power at 12 m/s can
be signicantly increased, while the tower fore-aft DEL is lower for
all values of r. The relative tower fore-aft DEL increases from 0.7 to
0.9 as r increases. This can be used in the wind turbine design
process, as input to the tower design. The conclusion on the
gradient based tuning is not as obvious as in the 10 m/s load case.
Based on fta the controller corresponding to a factor 0.975 on the
generated mean power should be selected, but if the original Pareto
curve is considered the controller corresponding to a power factor
of 0.997 should be selected, as this gives a lower tower fore-aft DEL
than the baseline. Fig. 6 plots the other evaluated DELs for the 12 m/
s load case. It can be seen that in this case, the tower side to side DEL
and Pitch Bearing DEL are increased while the other DELs are
increased with small values. Fig. 7 shows the 14 m/s mean wind
speed case. In this case the tower fore-aft load increases with
increasing values of r and mean generated power. The tower fore-
aft DEL is starting at 0.6 and is increasing to 0.7 as the generated
power increases from 0.955 to slightly above 1. The Pareto curve is
more bumpy than in the 12 m/s load case, but still useable for the
wind turbine design process, handling all the different design ob-
jectives. The gradient curves in general shows low gradients, which
corresponds to the observations made on the Pareto curves. This
basically means that in terms of tower fore aft DEL, also taking its
Pareto curve into account, it would make sense to select the MPC
setup which generates the maximal power, as the tower fore-aft
DEL in general is below the baseline controller. The spider plot of
the other evaluated DELs in the 14 m/s load case can be seen in
Fig. 8, from which it can be seen that the yaw and the two blade
DELs, are at similar levels as the baseline. The Tower side to side
DEL is dramatically reduced, while the pitch bearing DEL is
increased. A couple of general trends can be seen from the three
load cases. Tower fore-aft loads increase with increasing values of r
and thereby increasing mean generated power levels. Also the
relative mean generated power for all cases can be obtained close to
1 with tower fore-aft load lower than 1. Much lower tower fore-aft
load levels can be obtained at the cost of reduced power generation.
It can also be seen that blade bearing loads increase with increasing
mean power generation in all the three load cases.
Fig. 5. Pareto curve for the Tower fore-aft DEL vs. mean generated power for load cases
with 12 m/s mean wind speed, and gradient of the same curve.
890 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891
Fig. 6. Spider plot of DELs (Tower sideways, Blade ap-wise, Blade Edgewise, Yaw and
Blade Bearing) for the 12 m/s mean wind speed. The blue solid curve is the MPC and
green dashed dotted curve is the baseline controller. (For interpretation of the refer-
ences to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
Fig. 7. Pareto curve for the Tower fore-aft DEL vs. mean generated power for load cases
with 14 m/s mean wind speed, and gradient of the same curve.
Fig. 8. Spider plot of DELs (Tower sideways, Blade ap-wise, Blade Edgewise, Yaw and
Blade Bearing) for the 14 m/s mean wind speed. The blue solid curve is the MPC and
green dashed dotted curve is the baseline controller. (For interpretation of the refer-
ences to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
The generation of the Pareto curves between different DELs and
the generated mean power with respect to different tunings of an
MPC can be a useable tool for wind turbine designers. As it can be
used to select different design setups, between power generation
and load levels, which correspond to required structural strength in
the designed wind turbine. In Ref. [21] another potential usage of
these Pareto curves for wind turbine MPC is presented, as a way to
adjust the controller settings depending on the current wind tur-
bulence level.
7. Conclusion
In this article, a model predictive control solution for a wind
turbine is evaluated. The model predictive controller is designed for
a joint power and tower fore aft DEL optimization. This is basically a
tradeoff between the two variables. The tradeoff is evaluated by
Pareto curves for the tower fore-aft load in relation to the generated
mean power as well as a number of other DELs in relation to the
generated mean power, all depending on a scaling of a simple
parameter in the weight matrices used in the model predictive
controller. The computed Pareto curves depict the expected
tradeoff between power generation and tower fore-aft DEL. The
Pareto curves are shown to be useful for wind turbine control
design, where different MPC setups can be used to select between
possible levels of generated power and DELs which again inuences
the production cost of the wind turbine. It is shown how the Pareto
curves can be used to tune the wind turbine MPC solution by a
gradient based approach. The evaluation also shows that the pro-
posed MPC solution can obtain the same amount of generated
power with lower tower fore-aft DEL.
References
[1] F. Adegas, R. Wisniewski, L. Larsen, Gain-scheduled model predictive control
of wind turbines using laguerre functions, in: Proceedings of American Con-
trol Conference 2013, Washington D.C., USA, 2013, pp. 653e658.
[2] M. Soltani, L. Larsen, R. Wisniewski, Mpc for Full Load Control, Tech. Rep,
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, March 2012.
[3] M. Soltani, R. Wisniewski, P. Brath, S. Boyd, Load reduction of wind turbines
using receding horizon control, in: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Control
Applications 2011, Denver, CO, USA, 2011, pp. 852e857, http://dx.doi.org/
10.1109/CCA.2011.6044407.
[4] M. Madsen, J. Filso, M. Soltani, Preview-based asymmetric load reduction of
wind turbines, in: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Control Applications
2012, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2012, pp. 1424e1429, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/
CCA.2012.6402671.
[5] M. Evans, M. Cannon, B. Kouvaritakis, Robust MPC tower damping for variable
speed wind turbines, IEEE Trans. Control Syst. Technol. 23 (1) (2015)
290e296, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TCST.2014.2310513.
[6] A. Korber, R. King, Model predictive control for wind turbines, in: Proceedings
of EWEC 2010, EWEA, Warsaw, Poland, 2010.
[7] S. ye, FLEX5 User Manual, Danish Technical University, Kgs. Lyngby,
Denmark, 1999.
[8] A. Kumar, K. Stol, Scheduled model predictive control of a wind turbine, in:
Proceedings of EWEC 2010, EWEA, Warsaw, Poland, 2010.
[9] A. Koerber, R. King, Nonlinear model predictive control for wind turbines, in:
Proceedings of EWEA 2011, EWEA, EWEA, Bruxelles, Belgium, 2011.
[10] L.C. Henriksen, N.K. Poulsen, M.H. Hansen, Nonlinear model predictive control
of a simplied wind turbine, in: Proceedings of IFAC World Congress, Milano,
Italy, 2011, pp. 551e556.
[11] T. Hansen, C. Henningsen, Next Generation Control of Wind Turbines, Master's
Thesis, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, June 2013.
[12] M. Mirzaei, N. Poulsen, H. Niemann, Robust model predictive control of a
nonlinear system with known scheduling variable and uncertain gain, in:
Proceedings of ROCOND 2012, Aalborg, Denmark, 2012, pp. 604e609.
[13] S.C. Thomsen, Wind Turbine Control & Model Predictive Control for Uncertain
Systems, Ph.D. Thesis, DTU, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, 2010.
[14] L. Henriksen, M. Hansen, N. Poulsen, Beyond the cp-curve in model-based
control of wind turbines, in: Proceedings of EWEA 2012, Copenhagen,
Denmark, 2012.
[15] E. Lindeberg, H. Svendsen, K. Uhlen, Smooth transition between controllers for
oating wind turbines, Energy Procedia 24 (2012) 83e98, http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.egypro.2012.06.090.
[16] L. Henriksen, N. Poulsen, H. Niemann, Constraint handling within a multi-
blade coordinate framework of a wind turbine, in: Proceedings of the Joint
 P.F. Odgaard et al. / Renewable Energy 87 (2016) 884e891
50th IEEE CDC and ECC 2011, Orlando, Fl, 2011, pp. 5825e5830.
[17] L. Henriksen, M. Hansen, N. Poulsen, Wind turbine control with constraint
handling: a model predictive control approach, IET Control Theory Appl. 6
(11) (2012) 1722e1734, http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/iet-cta.2011.0488.
[18] J. Friis, E. Nielsen, J. Bonding, F. Adegas, J. Stoustrup, P. Odgaard, Repetitive
model predictive approach to individual pitch control of wind turbines, in:
Proceedings of Joint IEEE CDC & ECC 2011, IEEE, IEEE, Orlando, FL, USA, 2011,
pp. 3664e3670.
[19] V. Spudic, M. Jelavic, M. Baotic, Explicit model predictive control for reduction
891
of wind turbine structural loads, in: 51th IEEE Conference on Decision and
Control, Maui, HI, USA, 2012, pp. 1721e1726, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/
CDC.2012.6426490.
[20] K. Johnson, Adaptive Torque Control of Variable Speed Wind Turbines, Tech.
Rep. NREL/TP-500e36265, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden,
Co, USA, August 2004.
[21] P. Odgaard, On usage of pareto curves to select wind turbine controller tun-
ings to the wind turbulence level, in: Proceedings of ECC 2015, Linz, Austria,
2015, pp. 1528e1533.