Optimal Allocation of Robotic Wind Turbine Inspectors in a Wind Farm

Wind turbines play an important role in producing clean energy and reducing pollution, but they can fail during the operation due to various types of faults and environment uncertainties. Therefore, one of the key problems in wind energy systems is the resilient control to achieve their high reliability. To reach this goal, we first design a resilient controller by incorporating faults into the wind turbine model. Second, we utilize various kinds of robotic wind turbine inspectors (RWTI) that can detect different types of faults to support the resilient control. Then, we formulate an RWTI allocation problem which aims to minimize the damage due to faults in a wind farm. We quantify the damage by computing the control cost under faults, and also take the probability of fault occurrence into account. The solution to this optimization problem yields an optimal dispatching strategy of RWTIs in a wind farm, and enhances the resiliency of the wind energy system.