Variable-Speed Hydropower Plants (VSHP) are becoming more promising for stabilising power grids with the increasing integration of renewable energy sources. This research focuses on improving fault ride-through capabilities and delivering efficient ancillary services for VSHPs to support the grid by developing a comprehensive control strategy. The control system proposed integrates a machine-side controller, a Frequency Support Controller (FSC), a Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM), a Vector Current Controller (VCC) for the grid-side converter, a turbine governor for regulating turbine speed, and a DC-link controller. PID with an anti-windup scheme and a Model Predictive Controller (MPC) were employed for the turbine governor. The MPC turbine governor results demonstrate the potential of advanced control methods for enhanced performance of the VSHP. A benchmarking between the MPC and the PID governor was made. The benchmarking results have reported that the MPC can achieve reference tracking improvements up to $99.42\%$. Tests on a diverse set of grid scenarios were conducted, and the graphical results showed significant improvements in mitigating the frequency drops through the effective governor response. The synthetic inertia provision is swift, completing within seconds of a frequency drop. Compared to the fixed-speed approach, the VSHP improves the grid’s overall stability by minimising frequency dipping and achieving steady-state recovery remarkably faster. The fixed-speed approach only begins to recover minutes after the VSHP reaches the settling time. By effectively providing critical ancillary services such as frequency support, synthetic inertia, and smooth fault ride-through capability, the VSHP can become a transformative solution for future power grids, which are estimated to be more reliant on renewable energy sources.

This paper explores the design of a full envelope speed controller to operate the X-Rotor Offshore Wind Turbine. The X-Rotor is a heavily modified V-rotor vertical axis wind turbine, in which the primary rotor has conventional blades angled both up and down from the ends of a relatively short and stiff cross-arm. The upper half employs full span blade pitching for speed regulation and the lower half is aimed at reducing overturning moments on the main bearing and provides power take-off through compact secondary horizontal axis turbines mounted at the tip of the lower blades. The operational strategy is somewhat similar to that of a variable speed pitch regulated horizontal axis wind turbine, however it differs in the following aspects: the way aerodynamic torque is balanced across the operating envelope, the adjustment of equilibrium operating points at below rated operation, the relationship of aerodynamic torque on the primary rotor to pitch angle, and the operation of the secondary rotors to increase energy capture. These aspects increase the complexity of the control strategy but also ease the controller requirements. The developed controller is tested on a turbine model with sufficient complexity to model the essential dynamic properties of the turbine concept.

This paper presents a novel model-based detection scheme capable of detecting and diagnosing gusts. Detection is achieved by monitoring the innovations error (i.e., the difference between the estimated and measured outputs) of an extended discrete Kalman filter. It is designed to trigger a detection/confirmation alarm in the presence of wind anomalies. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate that both operating and coherent extreme wind gusts can successfully be detected. The wind anomaly is identified in magnitude and shape through maximum likelihood ratio and goodness of fit, respectively. The detector is capable of isolating extreme wind gusts before the turbine over speeds.

A novel strategy to reduce unwanted swings and motions in floating wind turbines is presented. At above rated wind speeds, the platform, on which the wind turbine is mounted, causes the generator speed control loop to become unstable. The proposed strategy assures stability of the control loop by an additive adjustment of the measured generator speed using tower fictitious forces. The developed strategy is independent of the platform and wave dynamics.