276

Int. J. Renewable Energy Technology, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2015

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by artificial

neural network-based pitch angle controller
M.A. Chowdhury
Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science,
Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus,
Jalan SimpangTiga, 93350 Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Email: mchowdhury@swinburne.edu.my
Abstract: Wind energy has been receiving more acceptance as a reproducible,
resourceful and clean energy source since last decade. Wind power is not
constant and may fluctuate below the rated wind power when the wind speed is
lower than the rated speed. This fact affects the stability of the power system, to
which the wind generators are connected. This is becoming more significant
with the increasing penetration of wind energy systems. Pitch angle control has
been one of the most common methods for smoothing output power
fluctuations during below rated wind incidents. An artificial neural network
(ANN)-based pitch angle controller is proposed in this paper for smoothing
wind power fluctuations during below rated wind incidents beside traditional
power regulations during above rated wind incidents. Two smoothing methods
have been presented: the determination of the command output power based on
the exponential moving average with a proper selection of correction factor by
neural network and the dynamic selection of target output power according to
the wind incident. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed
ANN-based pitch angle controller in smoothing output power fluctuations with
significantly small drop of output power.
Keywords: wind power; smoothing power fluctuations; pitch angle control;
artificial neural network; ANN.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chowdhury, M.A. (2015)
Smoothing wind power fluctuations by artificial neural network-based pitch
angle controller, Int. J. Renewable Energy Technology, Vol. 6, No. 3,
pp.276294.
Biographical notes: Md. Ayaz Chowdhury obtained his Bachelor degree in
Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Islamic University of Technology
(IUT), Bangladesh, in 2007. He worked from 2008 as a Lecturer with
International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Bangladesh. He finished
his PhD from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia in 2013.
Currently, he is working as a Lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology
Sarawak Campus. His research is mainly focused on power system stability and
control, grid integration of renewable energy and smart grid.

Introduction

In recent years, wind energy has become popular due to its inherent attribute of
reproducible, resourceful and pollution-free characteristics against the rapid depletion and
Copyright 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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277

increasing environmental threats of conventional energy. Moreover, wind energy has

been competing with conventional energy as a result of its cost reduction with
technological advancements and incentives for adopting renewable energy since last
decade. All these factors have caused wind power to become the fastest growing energy
source.
In this situation, many small scale wind farms are connected to the distribution
network while many wind farms of 50 MW or more are directly connected to
transmission network (Lin et al., 2009). These bring new challenges to the stability of
power system. One of the challenges is that wind power is not constant and can fluctuate
significantly below the rated power since wind power is proportional to the cube of the
wind speed. The problems originated by the wind power fluctuations are as follows
(Kamel et al., 2010):

Wind power fluctuations may cause the grid frequency to fluctuate.

Amount of absorbed reactive power by the induction generator from power grid is
directly related to the active power generation. The variation in wind speed causes
the fluctuation of the active power generation and thus the absorbed reactive power,
leading to voltage flicker at the buses of the power grid.

Frequency fluctuation and voltage flicker provide poor power quality and originate
instability problems in the power system, especially when there are loads sensitive to
accept high voltage and frequency variations.

The importance of smoothing output power fluctuations (SOPF) becomes more

significant with the increasing penetration of wind energy systems into the grid. The
synchronisation phenomena of wind turbines in a wind farm have been discussed (Cidras
et al., 2002). It showed that a wind farm with many wind turbines has the natural
tendency of the SOPF, however this tendency may be lost if the output power fluctuation
is synchronised from the synchronisation phenomena. Recently, the provision of power
storage system for the SOPF has been proposed (Kamel et al., 2010; Kinjo et al., 2006;
Senjyu et al., 2004; Muyeen et al., 2008, 2012; Islam et al., 2013). This strategy is
effective when power quality is concerned for high sensitive loads, but it is not efficient
from economic point of view.
On the other hand, pitch angle control has become a very popular method for the
SOPF, which can be achieved by different methods, like minimum variance control
(Sakamoto et al., 2004), H control (Sakamoto et al., 2006), fuzzy logic control (Kamel
et al., 2010), generalised predictive control (Senjyu et al., 2006) to ensure that the
generated output power follows a command value determined by exponential moving
average (EMA). Although these methods provided a reliable smoothing operation at low
cost, they can only perform partial SOPF and hence offer the partial solution to the
problems originated by the output power fluctuations. This kept the compensation role of
the power storage system for proper smoothing still significant. In addition, they caused a
large drop in output power.
In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) based pitch angle controller is
proposed on the motivation of better smoothing performance with a lesser drop in output
power than that was achieved in the previous literature. ANN adapts the wind energy
systems nonlinearity and ambiguous dynamics with proper training (Taalab et al., 1999).
Two smoothing methods are presented. The first method combines the work in Kamel
et al. (2010) and Senjyu et al. (2006), it determines the command output power through

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M.A. Chowdhury

the EMA with a proper selection of correction factor by neural network so that the output
power follows the command value by dynamic pitch actuation. It eases the ANN training
for achieving proper input-output correlation with positive domain control input so that it
gives optimum SOPF with minimum possible pitch angle generation. It results in lesser
drop in output power. The second method selects target output power to which the output
power would be limited to. Different values of a multiplication factor, n are assigned for
different target values to enable such dynamic pitch actuation so that it ensures proper
SOPF with lesser drop in output power. A dynamic simulation is carried out to validate
the effectiveness of the proposed ANN-based pitch angle controller.
This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the configuration of
wind generation system with their characteristic equations. Section 3 describes the
conventional proportional integral (PI) pitch angle controller. Section 4 presents the
control strategy, structure and training method of the proposed ANN-based pitch angle
controller. Section 5 presents the simulation results demonstrating the effectiveness of the
proposed methods in SOPF, followed by the conclusions in Section 6.

Wind power generation system

The aerodynamics of the wind turbine is characterised by Cp-- curve, which is usually
provided by the manufacturers. Cp is the power coefficient; it corresponds to maximum
mechanical power extraction from wind at its maximum value and is a function of the
tip-speed ratio () and the pitch angle (). For a given Cp, the mechanical power (Pm) and
mechanical torque (Tm) extracted from the wind by the wind turbine can be expressed by
(Gracia et al., 2008):
Pm =

AC p ( , )VW 3
2

(1)

Tm =

Pm
t

(2)

where is the air density, A is the sweep area of the blades, VW is the wind speed and t
is the turbine rotor speed.
Conventionally, the rotor is treated as two lumped masses, i.e., turbine mass and
generator mass. They are connected together by a shaft with a certain damping and
stiffness coefficient values. Neglecting the turbine and generator self-damping, shaft
stiffness and torsional oscillations, the mathematical equation can be expressed as (Gracia
et al., 2008):
2 ( Ht + H g )

dg
= Tm Te
dt

(3)

where Ht is the turbine inertia constant, Hg is the generator inertia constant, g is the
generator rotor speed and Te is the electromagnetic torque.
For the induction generator, a synchronously rotating d-q reference frame of fourth
order is used, which is rotating with the same speed as the stator voltage. Stator and rotor
voltages in this reference frame are given in the following equations (Gracia et al., 2008):

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by ANN-based pitch angle controller

279

vds = Rs ids qs +

1 d ds
b dt

(4)

vqs = Rs iqs + ds +

1 qs
b dt

(5)

vdr = Rr idr s qr +

1 d dr
b dt

(6)

vqr = Rr iqr + s dr +

1 d qr
b dt

(7)

where v is the voltage, i is the current, R is the resistance, s is the slip, is the flux and b
is the angular frequency. Suffix s, r, d and q denote stator, rotor, d-axis component and
q-axis component, respectively.
The electromagnetic torque (Te) is expressed as
Te = p ( ds iqs qs ids )

(8)

where p is the number of pole pairs.

The output active power (Pg) and reactive power (Qg) of a wind turbine delivered to
the grid are calculated as
Pg = vds ids + vqs iqs vdr idr vqr iqr

(9)

Qg = vqs ids + vds iqs vqr idr vdr iqr

(10)

The parameters of the wind turbine used in this work are shown in Table 1
(SimPowerSystems, 2010).
Table 1

Wind turbine parameters

Parameter

Symbol

Value

Unit

Nominal mechanical output power

Pmec

1.5

MW

Nominal electrical power

Pelec

1.5/0.9

MW

Nominal voltage (L-L)

Vnom

575

Volt

Stator resistance

Rs

0.00706

p.u.

Stator leakage inductance

Lr

0.171

p.u.

Rotor resistance

Rr

0.0058

p.u.

Rotor leakage inductance

Lr

0.156

p.u.

Magnetising inductance

Lm

2.9

p.u.

Base frequency

60

Hz

Inertia constant

Friction factor

0.01

p.u.

Pair of poles

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M.A. Chowdhury

Conventional PI pitch angle controller

The control system generates the voltage command signals for the rotor and grid side
converters in order to control the DC voltage and the reactive power or the voltage at the
grid terminals. The power converters must be controlled in collaboration with the
pitch angle controller so that it forces wind turbines to follow a predefined power-speed
characteristic, known as tracking characteristic to ensure optimal energy capture
when the mechanical power is extracted by the rotor during both below and above
nominal wind incidents. Tracking characteristic curve follows the maximum power
points for different wind speeds, which is illustrated by the red curve (Figure 1)
(SimPowerSystems, 2010). Power reaches 1 p.u. at minimum generator rotor speed value
of 1.21 p.u., which is held constant for any values higher than this.
Figure 1

Turbine power characteristics and tracking characteristic (see online version for
colours)

Figure 2

Control scheme of the conventional PI pitch angle controller

Conventionally, PI pitch angle controller is used to maintain the output power of the wind
turbine at its rated value by adjusting the pitch angle of the blades, which provides an
effective means of regulations in strong wind speeds. Figure 2 shows a conventional
simplified PI pitch angle controller, which regulates the output in accordance with the
error (e) between generator rotor speed (g) and its upper limit (reference) value. This
upper limit value is chosen in such a way that a minimum possible reference value

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281

enables generation of maximum possible power (1 p.u.). The minimum value is expected
to be chosen as higher generator rotor speed is vulnerable to power system stability. For
the specific wind turbine system adopted in SimPowerSystems (2010), this reference
value has been chosen as 1.21 p.u. The error signal is sent to the PI pitch angle controller,
which produces the command pitch angle (c). It reduces the turbine operating efficiency
to minimise power coefficient so that the generator maintains its control speed value.
Pitch servos are employed for proper positioning of the blades, which is modelled by
using a first order delay system. The pitch actuation system cannot respond instantly.
That is the reason why servo delay of 0.25 s has been chosen. The pitch actuation system
is also limited by its actuation speed. A rate limiter for pitch rate of change of 3 o/s has
also been added to get more realistic responses from the pitch angle control system
(Kamel et al., 2010). It gives the value of pitch angle ().

ANN-based pitch angle controller

Wind generators may operate above rated wind speed or below rated wind speed (the
rated wind speed in this study is 13.3 m/s). Two ANNs have been incorporated in the
pitch angle controller for the operation of wind turbine above the rated wind incident
(ANN-A) and below the rated wind incident (ANN-B).
ANNs are computing and processing systems based on the neural structure of the
brain. It is made up of a large number of simple, highly interconnected processing
elements that contend the structure and operation of the biological nervous system.
However, a typical ANN has a simpler architecture than biological neurons. ANNs are
typically organised in input, hidden and output layers. The communication between the
input layer and one or more hidden layers are maintained through their weighted
connections. Every neuron in the hidden layers connects all neurons in the output layer.
The final results are obtained from the output layer according to the data processing in
the hidden layer. Learning in ANNs is achieved through special training algorithms.
These algorithms are based on the learning rules, presumed to mimic the learning
mechanisms of biological systems (Yilmaz and Ozer, 2009).
ANNs differ in their architecture and the way they are trained. The selection of neural
network includes the selection of number of layers, choice of transfer function, number of
inputs and number of neurons in each layer. Alternative architectures should be tried to
find the best performing structure on the trial and error basis. A four-layered multi layer
perceptron (MLP) network has been adopted in this paper with one input layer, two
hidden layers and one output layer. Hidden layer helps in establishing correlations
between input and output parameters and two hidden layers can model complex-mapping
functions reasonably well. Each of input and output layers is represented by a single
neuron and the number of neuron in each of the hidden layer is determined from the
network optimisation process.
A tangent sigmoid nonlinear mapping function has been employed in this application,
which helps in modelling functions of arbitrary shape. The number of neurons in the
input layer and hidden layers are decided by experimentation, which involves training
and testing different network configurations (Yurdusev et al., 2006). An architectural
graph of an MLP network has been illustrated in Figure 3 (Haykin, 1994).

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M.A. Chowdhury

Figure 3

Architectural graph of an MLP network with two hidden layers

A back propagation algorithm namely Bayesian regulation has been used for training
process in this paper, which updates weights according to the errors between network
output and desired output. The algorithm cycles through the training as follows (Haykin,
1994):
Step 1

Initialisation of all weights at random.

Step 2

Calculation of the output vector ( y (pk ) ) according to

N k 1

y (pk ) = tsgm(pk ) Wip( k 1) . yi( k 1) i( k )

i =1

p = 1, 2, , N k ; k = 1, 2, , M

(11)

where Wip( k 1) is the is the connection weight between the ith neuron in the (k
1)th layer and pth neuron in the kth layer, y (pk ) the output of the pth neuron in the
kth layer, tsgm(pk ) the tangent sigmoid activation function of the pth neuron in the
kth layer and (pk ) the threshold of the pth neuron in the kth layer.
Tangent sigmoid activation function (tsgm (pk ) ) is given as:
tsgm( x) =

Step 3

1 exp( x)
1 + exp( x)

(12)

Updating the weights according to

Wip( k 1) (t + 1) = Wip( k 1) (t ) +

( k ) ( k 1)
np yni

(13)

n 1

where t is the iteration number, the learning rate and p( k ) the local gradient of
the pth neuron in the kth layer.
Local gradient is given as

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by ANN-based pitch angle controller

N k +1

(k )
(k )
np
(.).
= tsgmnp

( k +1) ( k )
W pl (t )
nl

l =1

Step 4

283
(14)

Calculation of the total error () according to

I

NM

n =1 j =1

Step 5

(M ) (M )
yn. j y n . j

(15)

Iterate the calculation by returning to Step 2 until the total error is less than the
desired error.

Figure 4 shows the proposed design of the two combined fuzzy logic controllers: ANN-A
and ANN-B. Design strategies of ANN-A and ANN-B are described below.
Figure 4

Control scheme of the proposed ANN-based pitch angle controller

4.1 ANN-A
When the wind turbine operates during the wind incident above the rated value, the
generator rotor speed exceeds the control speed value. In this mode of operation, the
controller has got nothing to do regarding power fluctuation minimisation, because
generator produces currents at its maximum rating irrespective of wind speed fluctuation,
which ensures generation of constant wind power. The only concern of the controller is to
shed mechanical power for preventing the generator rotor from going above the control
speed limit value 1.21 p.u. The ANN-A has been proposed to incorporate the command
pitch angle controller (cA), which is only active in this mode of operation.
To obtain command pitch angle from the ANN-A (cA), generator rotor speed
variation from its reference value (eA) and its variation during a sampled time (eA) are
used as inputs. As control action of the ANN-A would be shedding mechanical power to
limit the generator rotor speed to a control speed value, using generator rotor speed as the
control input of the ANN-A is a means of direct control method. It gives more flexible
control over the system by enabling constant observation on generator rotor speed.
The network is ready to be trained once the ANN structure is formed to check
whether the structure is capable of producing the output variables from the inputs

M.A. Chowdhury

284

satisfactorily. Dynamic simulations are carried out to find out the required command
pitch angle (cA) for the inputs eA and eA and thus 77 training samples are formed to
carry out this process (Figure 5). Minimum error is the key indication of a better training
performance. The structure of the network (number of layers and neurons), training and
momentum coefficients were altered to minimise the error to find the best architecture.
The training error is minimal when the number of neurons in the first and second hidden
layers is 6 and 5 respectively.
Figure 5

Training data for ANN-A (see online version for colours)

4.2 ANN-B
On the other hand, when the wind turbine operates during the wind incident below the
rated value, there is no generation of pitch angle. Any variation in wind speed can cause
high fluctuations in wind power. To smooth the fluctuating wind power, two methods
have been proposed to incorporate into the ANN-B controller by generating command
pitch angle (cB).

4.2.1 Method 1
The smoothing technique of method 1 is to determine a command output power (Pg_com)
from the reference output power [the output power from the wind turbine with the
conventional PI controller has been considered as reference output power (Pg_ref)] and
generate pitch angle in such a way so that the generated output power can follow the
command output power. To accomplish this,

Command output power must be smooth.

Smoothing is achieved by the generation of pitch angle with some drop in output
power. As the generated output power is always lower than the reference output
power, command output power must be ensured to be lower than the reference value
so that the fuzzy rules for the generation of pitch angle are effectively set up by

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285

ensuring control input of variation of reference output power from the command
output power in ANN-B falls in positive domain.
As the initial step, the smoothed version of reference output power, known as initial
EMA command output power (Pg_com") has been generated. This command value at
any instant t is given as (NIST/SEMATECH, 2010):
Pg _ comt = C1t + (1 ) P1t

(16)

where C1 is the current value and P1 is the previous periods value of the reference output
power (Pg_ref) and is the smoothing constant.
In this paper, 12 periods of average value (each of 1 s) is used in simulation. So, the
EMA starts from 12 s when 12 periods data are available. Smoothing constant () is
chosen as 0.8, which indicates that 80% weight has been considered for the data of
present period in comparison with 20% weight to the previous periods data. The trend of
weight assigned to the previous periods data can be realised by expanding (16)
Pg _ com 't = Ct + (1 ) [ Ct 1 + (1 ) Pt 1 ]
= Ct + (1 )Ct 1 + (1 ) 2 Pt 1
=

t 1

(1 ) C
i

t i

(17)

+ (1 )t Pt 1

i =0

The term (1 )t indicates that weights of the previous periods data are exponentially
decreasing. The distribution of the EMA weights for n samples is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6

Distribution of EMA weights

The superiority of the EMA over other smoothing techniques is that the EMA can follow
wind speed more rapidly because it uses its data of previous periods for next calculation
(Kamel et al., 2010).

M.A. Chowdhury

286

To ensure the command output power (Pg_com) to be lower value than the reference
value, a concept of correction factor (k) has been introduced, which is related to EMA
command output power (Pg_com) in the following manner.
Pg _ com = k Pg _ com

(18)

The correction factor (k) has been determined by ANN. Variation of reference output
power from the command output power (eB1) and reference output power (Pg_ref) are used
as inputs. 108 training samples are obtained from the dynamic simulations, which is
given in Figure 7. ANN structure with 8 and 7 neurons have been selected for the first
and second hidden layer, respectively for minimum training error.
Figure 7

Training data for determining correction factor (k) (see online version for colours)

During training, the ANN achieves an optimum weight matrix to evaluate the complex
input-output relation. So, any small changes in the inputs results in alteration in the
weight matrix, which are reflected in the output. This causes the trend of the signal to
follow the reference value. So, the command signal is smoothed by EMA once again to
achieve the final command value (Pg_com) in the following manner
Pg _ com = C2 + (1 ) P2

(19)

where C2 is the current value and P2 is the previous periods value of the command value
(Pg_com).
Figure 8 shows that the command output power (Pg_com) achieved is lower than the
reference output power (Pg_ref) over the whole 300 s period except for the period during
the rapid change in operating points from the EMA command output power (Pg_com) by
the generation of correction factor (k), where the role of k is insignificant because output
power simply switches to a different operating point and needs not to be smoothed. The
role of k is not accountable during above rated wind incidents as well, because output
power is generated at its maximum rating and needs not to be smoothed either.

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by ANN-based pitch angle controller

Figure 8

287

Obtaining command output power from EMA command output power by the generation
of correction factor (k) (see online version for colours)

To obtain command pitch angle from ANN-B using method 1 (cB1), variation of
reference output power from the command output power (eB1) and its variation during a
sampled time (eB1) are used as inputs. 77 training samples are obtained from the
dynamic simulations, which is given in Figure 9. ANN structure with 6 and 5 neurons
have been selected for the first and second hidden layer respectively for minimum
training error.
Figure 9

Training data for ANN-B (method 1) (see online version for colours)

M.A. Chowdhury

288

4.2.2 Method 2
Another method is proposed to minimise wind power fluctuations during below rated
wind incidents for the FLS-B. The following steps have been carried out as a means of
design strategy:

Generated wind power (Pg) has been categorised into the stages with the steps of
0.05 p.u., which is defined as power stage (PS) as shown in Table 2. The lower
limit value of each corresponding PS is taken as a target value (Pg_tar) for the
controller.

If the generated wind power falls under a PS, a pitch angle would be actuated to shed
mechanical power and limit the wind power to Pg_tar. For example, if Pg = 0.78 p.u.
at any instant, a pitch angle is actuated to make Pg=0.75 p.u. (see PS3 in Table 2).

Table 2

Power stages

Power stage
PS1

Range

Pg_tar

0.9 < Pg 0.85

0.85

PS2

0.85 < Pg 0.8

0.8

PS3

0.8 < Pg 0.75

0.75

.
.
.
PS16

0.15 < Pg 0.1

0.1

PS17

0.1 < Pg 0.05

0.05

PS18

0.05 < Pg 0

Figure 10 Training data for ANN-B (method 2) (see online version for colours)

To obtain command pitch angle from ANN-B using method 2 (cB2), variation of
reference output power from the target value selected by ANN-B (eB2) and its variation
during a sampled time (eB2) are used as inputs. 77 training samples are obtained from the

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by ANN-based pitch angle controller

289

dynamic simulations, which is given in Figure 10. ANN structure with 6 and 5 neurons
have been selected for the first and second hidden layer respectively for minimum
training error.
Control action of ANN-B would be limiting output power to a certain target value and
output power has been divided into stages instead of generator rotor speeds, which make
the control design easier because the use of the rotor speed would cause nonlinear.
The range of the command pitch angle output is different for each corresponding PS.
It generally requires more pitch angle generation as wind power falls in PS of lower
levels. That is why; the output is multiplied with a multiplication factor (n), which is of
higher value when the output power resides in lower PS. The values of n for different PS
are listed in Table 3.
Table 3

Multiplication factor (n) for method 2

Power stage

Power stage

PS1

PS12

2.33

PS2

PS13

2.667

PS3

1.167

PS14

PS4PS7

1.5

PS15

3.33

PS8PS9

1.83

PS16

10

PS10

PS17

41.667

PS11

2.167

PS18

75

Simulations results

To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, a wind turbine connected to a

grid has been simulated using MATLAB/Simulink. The control action and collective
responses of the conventional method (with PI pitch angle controller) and the proposed
methods (with ANN-based pitch angle controller) at the grid have been compared. A
fluctuating wind is simulated, whose pattern is adopted from Kamel et al. (2010) and
Gracia et al. (2008). The effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy logic pitch angle controller
is demonstrated in the following sections.

5.1 Evaluation of ANN-A

The conventional PI pitch angle controller activates pitch actuation [Figure 11(b)] only
when the above rated wind incidents prevail (between 102 s and 160.2 s). In this mode,
the proposed controller also activates pitch actuation for shedding mechanical power to
prevent generator rotor from going above the control speed limit value by producing the
current at its maximum rating and maintains constant output power [Figures 11(c) and
11(d)] regardless of the abrupt change of wind speed.

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M.A. Chowdhury

Figure 11 Evaluation of the proposed methods, (a) wind speed, (b) pitch angle, (c) active power
and (d) reactive power

(a)

(b)

(c)

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291

Figure 11 Evaluation of the proposed methods, (a) wind speed, (b) pitch angle, (c) active power
and (d) reactive power (continued)

(d)

5.2 Evaluation of ANN-B

During below rated wind incidents (for the first 102 s and the last 139.8 s), there is no
pitch angle generation by the conventional PI pitch angle controller [Figure 11(b)] as
there is no point of limiting the generator rotor speed, which ensures the wind turbine
operation at its maximum possible efficiency. But, the outputs of active and reactive
powers have high fluctuations due to abrupt variations in wind speed [Figures 11(c) and
11(d)]. This is because wind power depends on the cube of the wind speed and the input
torque can not be controlled (Gracia et al., 2008). The SOPF is achieved by the proposed
methods and evaluated in the following sections.

5.2.1 Evaluation of the proposed method 1

For the control strategy in the proposed method 1, a command value is generated smaller
than the reference output power with the proper selection of correction factor by fuzzy
reasoning. The controller actuates pitch to limit the output power so that the output power
follows the command value. It means power fluctuation minimisation is achievable with
the cost of some output power drops. Figure 11(c) shows that partial smoothing of output
power is achieved during below rated wind incidents. In Figure 11(d), negative value of
the reactive power refers to absorption of reactive power by the induction generator from
power grid (due to having capacitive loads), which is directly related to the active power
generation and thus the absorbed reactive power is partially smoothed with the generation
of partially smoothing active power. The generation of pitch angle for method 1 is shown
in Figure 11(b).

5.2.2 Evaluation of the proposed method 2

The proposed method 2 causes pitch actuation to limit the output power to a target value
(Pg_tar) during below rated wind incidents. In Figure 11(c), it can be seen that the
proposed pitch angle controller sheds the output active power to ensure smoothing output
power of 0.7 p.u., as it falls into PS4 when there is no pitch angle generation for the first

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M.A. Chowdhury

40.5 s. We get smoothing output power: 0.65 p.u in the next 57.6 s, 0.8 p.u. between
161.4 s and 218.4 s and 0.6 p.u. onwards. The active power is always shed to Pg_tar
corresponding to the power stage it resides for smoothing the fluctuations. The reactive
power absorbed by the generator is also automatically smoothed with the generation of
smoothing
active power [Figure 11(d)]. The generation of pitch angle for method 2 is shown in
Figure 11(b).

5.3 Numerical validation of the proposed methods

The validity of the proposed methods in output power smoothing has been carried out
numerically by introducing the concept of maximum energy function (Pmax) and
smoothing function (Psmooth), which are expressed as (Senjyu et al., 2006):
Pmax =

P (t )dt

Psmooth =

(20)

dPg ( t )

dt

(21)

dt

As compared with the conventional method, maximum energy functions for both
proposed methods drop slightly because the pitch angle remains fixed at 0o when
conventional PI pitch angle controller is applied. Since the purpose of this work is to
smooth the output power, a drop in the output power can not be avoided. But, this drop
should be as minimum as possible for efficient operation. Figure 12(a) shows that a drop
in output power is approximately equal to 2.94% and 5.53% for method 1 and 2,
respectively, which is a significant improvement as compared to the conventional
smoothing method with approximate 30% drop in output power (Senjyu et al., 2006).
Figure 12 Numerical validation of the proposed fuzzy logic controllers, (a) maximum energy
function and (b) smoothing function

(a)

Smoothing wind power fluctuations by ANN-based pitch angle controller

293

Figure 12 Numerical validation of the proposed fuzzy logic controllers, (a) maximum energy
function and (b) smoothing function (continued)

(b)

On the other hand, if smoothing function (Psmooth) in (21) is small, the output power
fluctuation is small, which is the indication of good performance in smoothing output
power. Figure 12(b) shows that smoothing function drops to about 2/3 and 1/2 due to the
application of the proposed methods 1 and 2, respectively, in the comparison with the
conventional method.
The proposed method 1 demonstrates the economic benefit by employing power
storage system of smaller capacity besides the controller for partial smoothing purpose.
The proposed method 2 ensures nearly complete smoothing with a little more drop in
output power than the proposed method 1. It demonstrates a very little requirement of
compensation of output power fluctuations by means of power storage system during
normal operations ensuring greater economic benefits.

Conclusions

This paper presents an ANN-based pitch angle controller, which is controlled by two
mutually exclusive neural networks. The main functions of the controller are to regulate
output power during above rated wind incidents and smooth wind power fluctuations
during below rated wind incidents by dynamic pitch actuation. Two methods have been
depicted for the smoothing of wind power fluctuations The first method is to determine
the command output power based on the EMA with a proper selection of correction
factor by neural network to make output power to follow that command value. The
second method is to select the target output power values dynamically according to the
wind incident and limit power to obtain the target output. The performances of the
proposed ANN-based pitch angle controller with both methods have been compared with
that of the conventional PI pitch angle controller. The results indicate that the proposed
methods smooth output power fluctuations with significantly small drop of output power
as compared to the previous works. The method 1 performs partial smoothing with only
2.94% drop in output power demonstrating the economic benefit by employing power
storage system of smaller capacity besides the controller for smoothing purpose. The

294

M.A. Chowdhury

method 2 performs nearly complete smoothing with 5.53% drop in output power
demonstrating greater economic benefits with a very little requirement of compensation
of output power fluctuations by means of power storage system during normal
operations.

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