Active control strategies for system enhancement and load mitigation of floating offshore wind turbines: A review

Abstract

Recently, floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have attracted increasing attention owing to their capabilities, and such devices are being considered the next-generation technology to develop green energy. However, despite their prominent benefits, FOWTs are vulnerable to damage and degradation due to frequent operation under harsh environments involving highly variable wind flows and incident waves. In such scenarios, the system dynamics tend to generate additional motions, workloads, and undesired fluctuations. Owing to these aspects, the optimization of control strategies is challenging and thus must be extensively investigated to ensure long-term survivability. Many approaches involving both simulations and experiments on small-scaled test rigs have been reported. In this regard, this paper highlights the encountered issues and reviews the state-of-the-art control technologies for FOWTs, with the classifications based on the enhancements in the typical methods and floater architectures under region 3 (high wind speed) conditions.