Online data‐driven control of variable speed wind turbines using the simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation approach

This article presents a data‐driven control algorithm for a variable‐speed wind turbine in the partial load region. The controller is designed and optimized online to capture maximum energy from the wind. The online optimization is based on the simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation method (SPSA) that is data‐driven, has a low computational load, and converges rapidly. In the control structure, the generator torque control is activated, and the aerodynamical models and the wind speed value are not required. A suitable cost function is defined, and a time window optimization problem is solved via the SPSA algorithm. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated on a 4.8 MW wind turbine benchmark.