International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 10 No: 05

21

Pitch Angle Control of Variable Low Rated

Speed Wind Turbine Using Fuzzy Logic
Controller
A. Musyafa, A. Harika, I. M. Y. Negara, I. Robandi

Abstract Pitch angle control of wind turbine has been used

widely to reduce torque and output power variation in high rated
wind speed areas. It is a challenge to maximize available energy
in the low rated wind speed areas. In this paper, a wind turbine
prototype with a pitch angle control based on fuzzy logic to
maximize the output power is built and demonstrated. In the
varying low rated wind speed of 4-6 m/s, the use of fuzzy logic
controller can maximize the average output power of 14.5 watt
compared to 14.0 watt at a fixed pitch angle of the blade.
Implementation of pitch angle fuzzy logic-based control to the
wind turbine is suitable for the low rated wind speed areas.
Index Terms low rated wind speed areas, pitch angle control,
fuzzy logic, wind turbine.

I. INTRODUCTION

he use of wind turbine to generate electricity from

renewable resources is growing in the whole world. At the
end of 2009, more than 82 countries have utilized the
wind turbine for the electricity purpose with a capacity of
159.21 GW [1]. Many sub-tropical countries which have an
average wind speed of > 12 m/s employ wind turbines. For
example, United State of America has the largest installed
wind turbines with a capacity of 38.48 GW, China and
Germany has almost the same capacity of 26 GW [1].
However, in tropical countries such as Indonesia has a
relatively low rated wind speed with an average wind speed of
5 m/s. Indonesia has many rural and remote areas, and thus
local electricity power generation systems are needed. It is
reported Indonesia installed wind turbines with a capacity of
1.2 MW in 2008 and it is targeted a capacity of 255 MW in
2025 [2].
Manuscript received August 31, 2010.
A. Musyafa is with Department of Electrical Engineering, Institut
Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Kampus ITS Keputih Sukolilo, Surabaya,
Indonesia, 60111 and Engineering Physics Department, , Institut Teknologi
Sepuluh Nopember, Kampus ITS Keputih Sukolilo, Surabaya, Indonesia,
60111 (corresponding author to provide phone: +62-31-5947188, fax: +62-315923626; e-mail: musyafa@ep.its.ac.id).
A. Harika is with Engineering Physics Department, , Institut Teknologi
Sepuluh Nopember, Kampus ITS Keputih Sukolilo, Surabaya, Indonesia,
60111.
I. M. Y. Negara and I. Robandi are with Department of Electrical
Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Kampus ITS Keputih
Sukolilo, Surabaya, Indonesia, 60111.

It is a challenge to extract power from varying wind,

especially in the low rated wind speed areas. To maximize
available energy, a control system is required [3-11]. A
control strategy type of pitch angle control as a regulator of
variable speed of wind turbine has been used dominantly in
recent year [4]. The pitch angle control strategy is useful to
optimize the output power of the wind turbine for low rated
wind speed, to reduce torque and output power variation for
high wind speed, and to minimize fatigue load mechanical
turbine component [5].
There are some strategies of pitch control have been
proposed [5-11]. Conventional pitch control strategies such as
proportional and integral (PI) controller need the knowledge
of system dynamics [5]. Advanced control strategies such as a
fuzzy logic controller can be used when the system is not well
known or contains non-linearities [8, 10, 11]. A pitch angle
control using fuzzy logic for power system stabilization has
been proposed [11]. In [8], the simulation and comparisons of
the PI controller and fuzzy logic controller has been carried
out. In this paper, a pitch angle control of wind turbine using
fuzzy logic for low rated wind speed is proposed and
demonstrated. A wind turbine prototype and fuzzy logic
controller are built. A fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is
optimized to achieve high performance of wind turbine for the
low rated wind speed.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
A prototype of wind turbine is built and shown in Fig. 1(a). It
consists of three blades, a servo motor, a controller, rotor
rotation sensor, a generator, and some mechanical
components. The blades are developed based on the NACA
(National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) air foils with
a specification of length, width, and thickness of 50, 10, and
1.2 cm, respectively. A GW Servo 503 is used to control the
pitch angle of the blade. The controller is developed based on
a microcontroller AVR8535 and C++ programming language.
A rotary encoder is used to measure rotational speed of wind
turbine rotor.
Fig. 1(b) shows a diagram block of pitch angle control of
wind turbine using a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for low
rated wind speed. The pitch angle of the blade is controlled to
maximize the rotational speed of wind turbine and thus the
output mechanical power of wind turbine. From Fig. 1(b), a
measured rotational speed of wind turbine rotor in rpm from
rotary encoder ( measured ) is compared to the desired

International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 10 No: 05

rotational speed ( ref ). The FLC processes error, a delta
error, and wind speed data of

( ) = n n1 ,

= measured ref ,

and v in m/s, respectively. The

FLC produces the optimal pitch angle of blade ( ) with the

variation of wind speed.
In this paper, a wind turbine mechanical power is
maximized. The wind turbine mechanical power (P ) can be
expressed using [4]:

22

this paper [12]. To determine a membership function of the

inputs and the outputs, a wind test to the wind turbine
prototype is carried out in a wind tunnel. The wind turbine
rotor speed is measured with the wind speed variation from 0
to 6 m/s and adjusted pitch angle from 0 to 90o.
Based on the measured wind turbine rotor speed, the
membership function of the inputs is developed. In this paper
two types of membership functions are built which consider
the data set of pitch angle from 0 to 900 and 5.6 to 61.6o for
first type (FLC-1) and second type (FLC-2), respectively. Fig.
2(a) and 2(b) shows the input membership function of error
and delta error of the wind turbine rotor speed for both FLC-1
and FLC-2. A wind turbine rotor speed set point of 150 rpm is
chosen. The output membership function is shown in Fig. 2(c)
and 2(d) for the FLC-1 and FLC-2, respectively. Table 1 lists
the control rule of the input and the output variable for both
FLCs.
Table 1 Rule Base Fuzzy Logic Control

Pitch angle
dError

neg
zero

Neg
Neg
Neg

Error
zero
neg
zero

Pos
Zero
Pos

(a)

(a)

(b)
Fig. 1 (a) A prototype of wind turbine (b) a block diagram of pitch angle
control of wind turbine using FLC.

1
air C p ( , )Ar vw3
(1)
2
where air is air density, Ar is the area swept by blade, vw is
wind speed velocity, and C p ( , ) is the power coefficient of
P=

the wind turbine with the tip speed ratio of and the blade
pitch angle of . The tip ratio of is defined by using [4]:
R
(2)
=
vm
where is the turbine rotor speed and R is the radius of the
wind turbine blade. To maximize the wind mechanical power,
the power coefficient of the wind turbine is optimized via
controlling the pitch angle of the blade.
To control the pitch angle of the blade, the FLC is
developed. There are three steps to develop the FLC: (i)
determining the inputs, (ii) setting up the rules, and (iii)
designing a method to convert the fuzzy result of the rules into
output signal, a so called de-fuzzyfication [12]. Mamdani
method with a middle of maximum method (MOM) is used in

(b)

(c)

(d)
Fig. 2 Input membership function of (a) error (d) delta error, output
membership function (c) FLC-1, (d) FLC-2

International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 10 No: 05

pos

Zero

pos

23

Pos
25

Mechanical power, P (Watt)

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The input wind speed variation of 4-6 m/s is used to test the
wind turbine performance as in Fig. 3. The wind turbine
performance using pitch angle control of FLC-1 and FLC-2
are compared to the performance without control at a fixed
pitch angle of 28o.
Fig. 4 shows the mechanical power responses of without
controller and with controller of FLC-1 and FLC-2. From Fig.
4, it can be calculated the total mechanical power (Ptot ) ,
average power (P ) , standard deviation ( ) and uncertainty
( ) of the measured mechanical power as in Table 2. It is

without controller
FLC-1
FLC-2

20

15

10

50

100

150

200

250

time (s)

Fig. 4 Input wind speed

6.5

number of rules can also decrease the output power

fluctuation.

6
5.5

Table 2 Wind turbine performance

V (m/s)

FLC-1

FLC-2

Ptot (watt)

Without
controller
3466

2893

3623

P (watt)

14.0

11.6

14.5

4.03
0.26

6.29
0.40

3.8
0.24

4.5
4
3.5

(%)
(%)

3
2.5
2

50

100

150

200

250

IV. CONCLUSIONS

time (s)

Fig. 3 Input wind speed

apparent from Fig. 4 and Table 2 that the use of FLC-1 can
not improve the wind turbine performance. The FLC-1 fails as
controller due to the selection of data set of pitch angle from 0
to 90o. It is found that at low rated wind speed, only certain
range of angle can produce the wind turbine rotation (i.e. data
set of FLC-2). The use of FLC-2 can improve the performance
compared to without controller. The average power increases
from 14.0 to 14.5 watt for without controller and FLC-2,
respectively. It is also shown that the standard deviation
improves from = 4.03 to 3.8 % and also the uncertainty
improves from = 0.25 to 0.24 %, respectively. Thus, the
use of FLC-2 is suitable for performance improvement of the
wind turbine of the low rated wind speed.
There are some aspects can be carried to improve the
wind turbines performance. It is necessary to re-design the
turbine blade with other types. A turbine blade has a specific
power coefficient of wind turbine, C p ( , ) . Therefore, such

The wind turbine with pitch angle fuzzy logic-based control

for variable low rated wind speed has been developed and
demonstrated. The use of pitch angle fuzzy logic-based
control can improve mechanical power response performance
of wind turbine compared to the use of a fixed pitch angle or
without control. It is shown that at varying low rated wind
speed of 4-6 m/s, the average power increases from 14.0 to
14.5 watt and the uncertainty improves from 0.26 to 0.24 %
for the use of fuzzy logic controller and without control at a
fixed pitch angle, respectively. This prototype is suitable to be
implemented to maximize the mechanical power of wind
turbine in the low rated wind speed areas, such as in tropical
country of Indonesia.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]

turbine blade with a high C p ( , ) can increase the wind

[3]

turbine power output. In this paper the position of pitch angle

is actuated by motor step with a pace of 5.6o. By using a
smaller pace of motor step, the power fluctuation can be
decreased. It is also worth to improve the FLCs membership
function by increasing the number of rules. Increasing the

[4]

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International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 10 No: 05

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