Fault-tolerant cooperative control in an offshore wind farm using model-free and model-based fault detection and diagnosis approaches

Given the importance of reliability and availability in wind farms, this paper focuses on the development of fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control schemes in a cooperative framework (referred to as active fault-tolerant cooperative control) at the wind farm level against the decreasing power generation caused by turbine blade erosion and debris build-up on the blades over time. In more details, the paper presents a novel integrated fault detection and diagnosis and fault-tolerant control approach oriented to the design and development of two active fault-tolerant cooperative control schemes for an offshore wind farm. Each of the schemes employs a fault detection and diagnosis system to provide accurate and timely diagnosis information to be used in an appropriate automatic signal correction algorithm for accommodation of faults in the wind farm. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed schemes are evaluated and compared using different simulations on a high-fidelity offshore wind farm benchmark model in the presence of wind turbulences, measurement noises and realistic fault scenarios. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.