A distributed consensus control under disturbances for wind farm power maximization

In this paper we address the problem of power sharing among the wind turbines (WTs) belonging to a wind farm. The objective is to maximize the power extraction under the wake effect, and in the presence of wind disturbances. Because of the latter, WTs may fail in respecting the optimal power sharing gains. These are restored by employing a consensus control among the WTs. In particular, under the assumption of discrete-time communication among the WTs, we propose a distributed PID-like consensus approach that enhances the rejection of the wind disturbances by providing the power references to the local WT controllers. The latter are designed by employing an approximated feedback linearization control that, acting simultaneously on the WT rotor speed and the pitch angle, guarantees the tracking of general deloaded power references. The obtained results are validated on a 6-WT wind farm example.