Ouput Power Smoothening of Variable-Speed Wind
Turbine Systems by Pitch Angle Control
Tan Luong Van
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Yeungnam University
214-1, Daedong, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk,
712-749, Korea
E-mail: luongees2@yahoo.com
Abstract—This paper proposes a new strategy of the output
power smoothening for the variable speed wind turbine systems,
which is based on the pitch angle control using the fuzzy logic
controller. In this method, the turbine power and its reference
are used as control input variables for the fuzzy logic controller
(FLC), in which the turbine power reference is determined
depending on the double exponential smoothening (DES) method.
This method is effective to smoothen the generator output power
without any need of the power compensation by the energy
storage system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is
verified by simulation results for a 2-MW PMSG wind turbine
system.
Keywords - Fuzzy logic control, pitch angle, power smoothening,
wind turbine.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, there has been a great growth in the wind
power system due to the environmental advantages and the
economic benefits of the fuel savings. The turbine output
power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed, which
causes the generated power to be fluctuated much. This can
lead to the frequency and voltage stability problems when the
penetration of the wind turbines into the electrical power grid
is high [1].
The pitch angle control is necessary for the variable-speed
wind turbine system. In the wind speed regions higher than its
rated value, the generator output power and speed are
controlled at the rated values by controlling the pitch angle.
On the contrary, in low wind speed regions, the maximum
energy extracted from the wind turbine is obtained by
controlling the turbine speed. As a result, the power
conversion efficiency of the turbine is significantly increased
with the increase of the power ripples. The pitch angle control
can also be applied for smoothening the output power
fluctuations.
A few methods have been suggested to smoothen the
generator output power in the variable-speed wind turbine
system. In one category, the energy storage system has been
used to absorb the power fluctuations [2]. This strategy is very
effective when the power quality issues are related to the high
sensitive loads. However, it is not efficient in term of the
economic view point.
978-1-4673-4584-2/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Dong-Choon Lee
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Yeungnam University
214-1, Daedong, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk,
712-749, Korea
E-mail: dclee@yu.ac.kr
On the other hand, the pitch angle control has been
employed for smoothening the power fluctuations. To control
the pitch angle, the proportional-integral (PI) pitch controller
has been often used for the power smoothening [3]. However,
the strategy is based on the model of the wind turbines
linearized at the operating points. Also, the controller provides
the poor performances by highly nonlinear characteristic of the
wind turbine. Also, a fuzzy logic controller has been used to
guarantee the power smoothening reliably [4]. Also, a
minimum variation controller for smoothening has been
introduced in [5]. This method is effective to compensate for
the influence of parameter variations. Moreover, the H∞
controller has been employed to achieve the robust stability
[6]. In addition, a generalized predictive controller used
together with a fuzzy reasoning corrector provides the stable
operations during the rapid change of the wind speed in
operating points [7]. However, the control methods partially
smoothen the output power fluctuations, which results in a
large drop in output power.
A pitch angle control scheme based on the fuzzy logic
control is proposed for the power smoothening in the low wind
speed region for the variable-speed wind turbine system. With
this method, the turbine power reference is calculated
depending on the double exponential smoothening (DES)
method. The superiority of the DES over other conventional
smoothening techniques is that the DES can follow the wind
speed quickly since it uses a current data as well as the prior
estimated data for the next sampling period [8]. This method
improves the performance of the power smoothening without
any power compensation. The proposed method is verified by
MATLAB/SIMULINK simulation results for a 2-MW PMSG
wind turbine system.
II. WIND TURBINE SYSTEMS
A. Blade modeling
The output power of wind turbines ( PWT ) is determined as
[1]
1
PWT = ρπ R 2 C p ( λ , β ) vw3 (1)
2
where  is the air density [kg/m3], R is the radius of blade [m],
166 IPEC 2012
vw is the wind speed [m/s], and C p (λ , β ) is the power
conversion coefficient which is a function of the tip-speed
ratio ( λ ) and the pitch angle ( β ). The turbine power is
determined by the power conversion coefficient and the tip-
speed ratio if the swept area, air density, and wind speed are
constant. The power conversion coefficient and the tip-speed
ratio depend on the aerodynamic characteristics of the wind Fig. 1. Block diagram of the pitch control system.
turbine.
The tip-speed-ratio λ is defined as [1] 1 1
β = − β+ β ref (6)
Rωt τc τc
λ= (2)
vw which is subject to
where ωt is the rotor speed of turbines. The power conversion β min ≤ β ≤ β max
coefficient is expressed as where  and ref are the actual pitch angle and pitch angle
1 1 reference.
C p (λ , β ) = c1 (c2 − c3 β − c4 β c5 − c6 ) exp(−c7 ) (3)
Λ Λ The time constant of the servo system is normally selected
where to be 0.25 sec for the fast acceleration of the servo system [1].
1 1 0.035 Also, a rate limiter (d/dt) is added to obtain a realistic
= − (4)
Λ λ + 0.08β 1 + β 3 response since the pitch actuation system cannot respond
instantly. Moreover, the pitch rate is limited at the maximum
and c1-c7 are the constants [9]. value of ±10 deg/sec. To decrease the risks of the fatigue
From (1) and (2), the turbine torque can be expressed as damage, the limit is not reached during the normal operation
1 Cp (λ, β ) 2 of the wind turbine.
Tt = ρπ R 3 vw . (5)
2 λ
III. EXISTING POWER SMOOTHENING METHODS
B. Control of PMSG Systems
For smoothening the wind generator output power, the most
The control structure of the line-side converter (LSC) important part is to determine the turbine power reference (Pref
consists of the outer DC-link voltage control and reactive ), which is the pitch controller input. The types of the average
power control loops, and the inner current control loops [2]. values are evaluated to ensure the effectiveness of the
For the generator-side converter (GSC), a cascaded control proposed controller.
structure composed of an inner current control loops and an A. Average Signal (AVG)
outer speed control loop is employed. To obtain the maximum
power at the minimum current, the d-axis reference current The average signal value is calculated after every specified
component is set to zero and then q-axis current is number of periods. For twenty measurements from D1 to D20,
proportional to the active power, which is determined by the the successive four-period average values, for example, are
speed controller. The maximum power point tracking method calculated as follows [8]:
is applied for the wind turbine control, which gives the speed AVG4 = ( D4 + D3 + D2 + D1 ) / 4
reference of the PMSG [1].
AVG8 = ( D8 + D7 + D6 + D5 ) / 4
C. Pitch System .
There are two operating modes in wind turbine systems .
according to the wind speed. Below the rated wind speed, the AVG20 = ( D20 + D19 + D18 + D17 ) / 4 (7)
blade pitch angle is fixed to give the maximum output power.
In this region, the characteristic curve reflects the basic law of B. Simple Moving Average (SMA)
power conversion, in which the power is proportional to the The simple moving average value is calculated after every
cube of the wind speed [1]. At the wind speeds which exceed four specified number of periods. If the twenty measurements,
the rated value, the blade pitch angle is controlled to protect the D1 through D20, are available, then the simple moving
turbines, where the output power is limited at the rated value. averages for successive four periods are calculated as follows
The block diagram of the typical pitch control loop is shown [8]:
in Fig. 1, in which the pitch servo system is included. The SMA4 = ( D4 + D3 + D2 + D1 ) / 4
pitch servo is modeled as the first-order delay system, with a
SMA8 = ( D5 + D4 + D3 + D2 ) / 4
time constant ( τ c ). The dynamic behavior of the pitch servo is
.
described as [1]
.

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 SMA20 = ( D20 + D19 + D18 + D17 ) / 4 (8)

C. Single Exponential Smoothening (SES)

The single exponential smoothening method is calculated
as [8]
st = kxt + (1 − k ) st −1 (9)
where xt is the current value, st-1 is the previous period of the
Fig. 2. Calculation of smoothened value using SES and DES methods.
SES, and k is the weighting factor.
For a period-based SES, the k can be calculated as: PWT
2
k= (10)
1+ N

Power
PWT

where N is the specified number of the periods. PWT Pref

IV. PROPOSED METHOD FOR POWER SMOOTHENING

To smoothen the generator output power, the turbine power
reference in the pitch controller (Pref ) is determined by the
double exponential smoothening. Then, the fuzzy logic
controller is designed to control the pitch controller.
A. Double Exponential Smoothening (DES)
The single exponential smoothening is not good when there
is a wind profile in the data in the next period of time. The
exponential smoothening with a trend works similarly to the
SES. However, two components of the level and the trend
have to be updated at every period. The level and trend
components are the smoothened estimates of the data and
average growth at the end of each period, respectively. The
formula for the DES are expressed as [8]
st′ = α xt′ + (1 − α )( st′−1 + bt −1 ) (11)
bt = β ( st′ − st′−1 ) + (1 − β ) bt −1 (12)
where xt′ is the current value of the DES, st′ represents the
smoothened value, bt is the best estimate of the trend, α is the
data smoothening factor (0<α<1), and  is the trend
smoothening factor (0<  <1). To obtain the smoothened
value, in this work, α and  are selected to be 0.095 which
approximates 20 periods of the average value. It means that
only 9.5% weight is considered for current value ( xt′ ), and
smoothened value ( st′ ) of the present and previous periods,
while the remaining 90.5% of weight is used for its
smoothened value and estimated value of the previous period.
The output of the algorithm depicting the estimate of the
value, x, at the time (t+m) is expressed as
Ft + m = st′ + mbt (13)
The initial values for the st′ and bt can be set as follows:
s0′ = x0′ (14)
b0 = x1′ − x0′ (15)
Time (s)
Fig. 3. Concept of grid power smoothening.
where x0′ and x1′ are is the values of the DES at the time, t=0
and t=1, respectively.
Fig. 2 shows an example of calculating the smoothened
value using SES and DES methods. With the given current
value, xt, the smoothened values (st , Ft+m ) using the SES and
DES methods are obtained, as illustrated in Fig. 2,
respectively. As can be seen, the smoothened value using the
DES method gives the better performance than that of using
the SES one, due to the additional estimated value, bt.
The concept of the output power smoothening for the wind
turbine system is shown in Fig. 3. The following steps
describe how to generate the power reference for the pitch
controller.
a. The turbine power, PWT, can be obtained as:
1
PWT = ρπ R 2 vw3 C p ( λ , β ) (16)
2
b. The average turbine power, PWT can be calculated from
(13).
c. The standard deviation of the turbine output power can be
calculated from the following equation:
t
³ (P − PWT ) dt
2
WT
PWT σ = t −T
(17)
T
d. Finally, the input power reference of the controller, Pref,
can be obtained as
Pref = PWT − PWT σ (18)
B. Design of Fuzzy Logic Controller
For variable-speed wind turbine systems, the performance
of the PI pitch controller is limited, especially due to the
nonlinearities of the wind turbine characteristics. Another
pitch angle controller using a fuzzy logic control has been

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proposed for output power smoothening when the wind speed
is lower than the rated value [7]. In this method, three types of
the average value for the turbine power have been used for
generating the turbine power reference. However, this method
is not effective when the wind speed changes rapidly.
In the proposed method, the turbine power reference, which
is the pitch controller input, is calculated from the turbine
output power by using the DES method. Then, the error Fig. 4. Block diagram of the pitch controller.
between the turbine power reference and the turbine output
NL NM NS ZE PS PM PL
power, PWT, is sent to the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) to
generate the pitch angle reference for the mechanical servo
system. The proposed fuzzy logic controller is shown in Fig.
4. To find the pitch angle reference ( β ref ), the design process
for a fuzzy logic controller consists of determining the inputs,
setting up the rules and designing a method to convert the ΔP[pu]
result of the rules into the output signal. It is known as a
NL NM NS ZE PS PM PL
defuzzification. To design the proposed FLC, the error of the
turbine power, ΔP , and variation of the power error, δ (ΔP)
are considered as the controller inputs.
For convenience, the inputs and output of the FLC are
scaled with the coefficients of kΔ , kδ , and k β , respectively.
These scaling factors can be constants or variables which play δΔP [ pu]
an important role in the FLC design to achieve a better NS
NL NM ZE PS PM PL
response in both transient and steady states. In this work, for
the simplicity of the controller design, these scaling factors are
empirically selected to be constant by a trial and error. These
values of the kΔ , kδ , and k β , are chosen as 1, 2000, and 100,
respectively.
The triangular membership functions with the overlap used βref [deg ree]
for the fuzzy sets of the inputs and output are illustrated in Fig.
Fig. 5. Membership functions of fuzzy logic controller for (a) Error of turbine
5, in which the linguistic variables are represented by NL power (P). (b) Variation of power error (δP). (c) Pitch angle (ref ).
(Negative Large), NM (Negative Medium), NS (Negative
Small), ZE (Zero), PS (Positive Small), PM (Positive Table I: Fuzzy rules of pitch controller.
Medium), and PL (Positive Large). ref δP
The grade of the input membership functions is obtained NL NM NS ZE PS PM PL
from the following equation: NL NL NL NM NM NS NS ZE
NM NL NM NM NS NS ZE PS
x−m NS NM NM NS NS ZE PS PS
μ ( x) = 1− (19) P ZE NM NS NS ZE PS PS PM
0.5w PS NS NS ZE PS PS PM PM
where μ ( x ) is the value of the grade of the membership, w is
PM NS ZE PS PS PM PM PL
PL ZE PS PS PM PM PL PL
the width, m is the co-ordinate of the point at which the grade
of the membership is 1, and x is the value of the input where N is the total number of the rules, μi is the membership
variable. grade for the i-th rule and Ci is the coordinator corresponding
The fuzzy mapping of the input variables to the output is
to the respective output or consequent membership function.
represented by IF-THEN rules. The entire rules consisting of
The actual pitch angle reference is obtained from multiplying
the operation regions are given in Table I.
In this work, the fuzzy logic with the Mamdani-type is β nref by k β .
applied for the inference mechanism [9]. The pitch angle
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
reference, β nref , is calculated as follows:
To verify the validity of the proposed method, simulation
N N has been performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK for 2-MW
 β
ref
n = ¦ μi Ci / ¦ μi (20) PMSG wind power system. The simulation condition is shown
i =1 i =1

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in Table II and III. Fig. 6(a) and (b) show the wind speed and
output power reference, respectively. As can be seen, the
turbine power, its average value, and the reference value of the
turbine power are obtained.
Fig. 7 shows the simulation results of the pitch angle
control, employing the conventional method ( β = 0 ) and the
fuzzy logic controllers using the SES and DES, respectively.
As can be seen in Fig. 7(a), in the low wind speed regions, the
maximum power is extracted from the wind turbines. For the
the DES is more smoothened than that of in the method using
the SES for the same pattern of the wind speed. The variations
of the pitch angle for the conventional method and the FLCs
using the SES and DES, respectively, are illustrated in Fig
7(b).
The performance of the generator output power is
evaluated by the maximum energy function and the
smoothening functions which are expressed, respectively, as
M

conventional method, however, the generated power is much Pg max = ¦ Pgi ⋅ Δt (21)
i
fluctuated due the wind speed variations. In this case, the wind
M
Pgsmooth = ¦ Pgi ⋅ Δt / ¦ Δti
power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. With the
(22)
proposed FLC, the generator output power in the method using i i
where Pgi is the generator output power at the sampling time ti,
t is the sampling period, and M is the number of sampling.
Compared with the conventional method, the generator output
power is decreased in this case. If the Pgsmooth is low, the
fluctuations of the generator output power are low. In the low
wind speed region, since the pitch angle is fixed at zero, the
Pgmax will be the maximum. At this fixed pitch angle, the
Pgsmooth will be increased since the generator torque cannot be
controlled.
As seen from Fig. 7(c), the maximum power obtained by the
FLC methods using the SES and DES are approximately 76-
MWh and 78-MWh, respectively. With the same pattern of the
wind speed, the smoothening functions for the FLC method
using the SES and DES are 12.9% and 11.2%, compared with
the conventional PI controller. Thus, the method using the
Fig. 6. Wind speed and turbine power. (a) Wind speed. (b) Turbine power,
DES gives the better performance of the power smoothening
average value and deviation component.
than that of in the case of the SES.
(a) Generator power (pu)

VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper, a fuzzy pitch control scheme has been

proposed to smoothen the power fluctuations during the low
speed regions. The proposed fuzzy pitch control is based on
the average turbine power, power deviation, and controller
input power reference. The average turbine power generated
(b) Pitch angle (degree)

from the exponential smoothening can follow the wind speed

profile well. Compared with the conventional method, the
proposed method using the single and double exponential
smoothening produces 12.9% and 11.2% lower output power
of the generator, respectively. However, the proposed method
can alleviate the power fluctuation and improve the system
performance without any need of the power compensation by
the energy storage device.
(c) Energy (MWh)

APPENDIX

The parameters of wind turbine and generators used for

simulation are shown in Tables II and III, respectively.
Fig. 7. Performance comparison of different pitch control methods. (a)
Generator power. (b) Pitch angle. (c) Energy.

170
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