A wind turbine cannot operate without a feedback controller. Feedback control regulates the rotor speed to maximize energy capture and extend the turbine’s lifetime by minimizing structural loads. This is achieved by incorporating the measured generator speed and other system states to ensure precise and reliable real-time control. Advanced methods, such as lidar-assisted control, further enhance performance by anticipating wind conditions.
Control is especially critical for floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), where the negative damping problem poses a unique challenge. In FOWTs, interactions between wind and platform motion can destabilize the system if not properly managed, emphasizing the importance of a robust turbine/controller combination early in the design process. Even if the turbine OEM has not yet been determined, considering control strategies from the start is essential for ensuring the stability, performance, and reliability of the final system.
Discover our FBsowento product line, designed to address your specific needs for both bottom-fixed and floating wind turbines.
FBsowento One
Controller for Bottom-Fixed Wind Turbines
FBsowento One is a high-performance controller for bottom-fixed wind turbines. In over a decade, it has been continuously enhanced and maintained, ensuring that it incorporates the latest advancements in turbine control technology. Utilizing industry-leading, model-based tuning processes, the controller can be easily adapted to various turbine designs, allowing for precise and reliable load and behavior predictions from the concept phase onward.
One of the key advantages of FBsowento One is our extensive experience designing controllers for large onshore and offshore wind turbines with >3000 controllers being currently in operation. This experience allows us to achieve realistic rotor speed overshoots and other dynamic characteristics, with loads consistently within 5% of those produced by OEM controllers.
Its performance has been continuously validated through numerous simulation studies and is actively deployed on research turbines in Germany. With a deep connection to the academic community and years of real-world data, FBsowento One has state-of-the-art power production and load results which increases the annual energy production (AEP) and extends the life span of key components, such as the tower and blades.
FBsowento One Floating
One Floating: Controller for floating wind turbines
FBsowento One Floating offers a robust, reliable, and highly efficient solution, specifically designed to address the unique challenges of floating turbine systems. Building on our successful experience with bottom-fixed turbine controllers, this model has been enhanced with additional control loops to manage floating-specific issues, such as the negative damping problem.
Our controller delivers realistic turbine behavior and loads, closely replicating the performance of OEM controllers. This ensures that the design process for your Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) is based on highly accurate simulations, providing you with reliable predictions of turbine dynamics and fatigue loads. Additionally, we provide a structural integrity report, allowing you to assess the potential impact of control strategies on the structural performance of the turbine, platform, and mooring system.
Leveraging industry-standard algorithms and powered by our proprietary SLOW MBS simulation software, the controller enables seamless integration into early-stage floating wind turbine development. The automated, model-based tuning process allows for rapid adaptation to design changes, facilitating quick prototyping and reducing time-to-market for your floating wind turbine platform. With over 10 years of experience and validated in field experiments, FBsowento One Floating ensures guaranteed system reliability.
Our solutions are fully customized to your requirements, ensuring that the controller meets the specific needs of your project, from the initial concept phase to deployment.
FBsowento Next Floating
Next: Pushing the Limits of Floating Wind Turbines.
FBsowento Next introduces the next generation of FOWT control. The cutting-edge, multi-variable controller is designed to optimize the long-term performance of your floating wind turbine systems. By reducing fatigue loads on the turbine, platform, and mooring system, the controller ensures stable, efficient performance throughout the turbine’s lifecycle. This state-of-the-art control solution uses advanced algorithms to dynamically adjust to environmental conditions, improving both operational efficiency and the structural integrity of your system.
With FBsowento Next, you can significantly reduce loads on different components, such as a 30% mooring line fatigue reduction as demonstrated in the figure. Using this controller, a floating wind turbine design it can significantly reduce material usage or extend the operational life.
This innovative solution is less IP-protected and can be open for collaboration with OEMs. The controller is backed by a specialized tuning toolbox. Once designed, the design can be adjusted rapidly to adjust for floater design changes, to support an integrated design optimisation approach. The FBsowento Next Floating is here to push the boundaries of FOWT control.
