Wind Energy Systems: Control Engineering Design

Presenting the latest developments in the field, Wind Energy Systems: Control Engineering Design offers a novel take on advanced control engineering design techniques for wind turbine applications. The book introduces concurrent quantitative engineering techniques for the design of highly efficient and reliable controllers, which can be used to solve the most critical problems of multi-megawatt wind energy systems.

This book is based on the authors’ experience during the last two decades designing commercial multi-megawatt wind turbines and control systems for industry leaders, including NASA and the European Space Agency. This work is their response to the urgent need for a truly reliable concurrent engineering methodology for the design of advanced control systems. Outlining a roadmap for such a coordinated architecture, the authors consider the links between all aspects of a multi-megawatt wind energy project, in which the wind turbine and the control system must be cooperatively designed to achieve an optimized, reliable, and successful system.

The textbook’s big-picture insights can help students and practicing engineers control and optimize a wind energy system, in which large, flexible, aerodynamic structures are connected to a demanding variable electrical grid and work automatically under very turbulent and unpredictable environmental conditions. The book covers topics including robust QFT control, aerodynamics, mechanical and electrical dynamic modeling, economics, reliability, and efficiency. It also addresses standards, certification, implementation, grid integration, and power quality, as well as environmental and maintenance issues.

To reinforce understanding, the authors present real examples of experimentation with commercial multi-megawatt direct-drive wind turbines, as well as on-shore, offshore, floating, and airborne wind turbine applications. They also offer a unique in-depth exploration of the quantitative feedback theory (QFT)—a proven, successful robust control technique for real-world applications—as well as advanced switching control techniques that help engineers exceed classical linear limitations.

Dr. Mario García-Sanz is Professor at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Ohio, the Milton and Tamar Maltz Professor in Energy Innovation, and Director of the Wind Energy and Control Systems Center at CWRU.  As Senior Advisor for the President of the M.Torres Group and Professor at the Public University of Navarra, he played a central role in the design and field experimentation of advanced multi-megawatt wind turbines for industry. Dr. García-Sanz held visiting professorships at the Control Systems Centre, UMIST (UK, 1995); at Oxford University (UK, 1996); at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA-JPL (California, 2004); and at the European Space Agency ESA-ESTEC (The Netherlands, 2008). 

He holds 20 industrial patents, has done more than 40 large research projects for industry and space agencies, and is author or coauthor of more than 150 research papers, including the books “Quantitative Feedback Theory: Theory and Applications”, Taylor & Francis (2006), and “Wind Energy Systems: Control Engineering Design”, Taylor & Francis (2012). 

Dr. García-Sanz is Subject Editor of the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, a member of IFAC and IEEE Technical Committees, and served as NATO/RTO Lecture Series Director and as Guest Editor of international journals (Robust control, QFT control, Wind turbine control, Spacecraft control). He was awarded the IEE Heaviside Prize (UK) in 1995 and the BBVA research award (Spain) in 2001.  Professor García-Sanz's main research interest focuses on bridging the gap between advanced control theory and applications, with special emphasis in Energy Innovation, Wind Energy, Space, Environmental and Industrial Applications.