ROSCO toolbox documentation

Version

v2.3.0

Date

Jun 29, 2021

NREL’s Reference OpenSource Controller (ROSCO) toolbox for wind turbine applications is a toolbox designed to ease controller implementation for the wind turbine researcher. The purpose of these documents is to provide information for the use of the ROSCO related toolchain.

Figure Fig. 1 shows the general workflow for the ROSCO toolchain.

Fig. 1 ROSCO toolchain general workflow

ROSCO Toolbox

• Generic tuning of NREL’s ROSCO controller

• Simple 1-DOF turbine simulations for quick controller capability verifications

• Parsing of OpenFAST input and output files

• Block diagrams of these capabilities can be seen in architecture.png.

ROSCO Controller

• Fortran based

• Follows Bladed-style control interface

• Modular

Standard Use

For the standard use case in OpenFAST, ROSCO will need to be compiled. This is made possible via the instructions found in Installing the ROSCO tools. Once the controller is compiled, the turbine model needs to point to the compiled binary. In OpenFAST, this is ensured by changing the DLL_FileName parameter in the ServoDyn input file.

Additionally, an additional input file is needed for the ROSCO controller. Though the controller only needs to be compiled once, each individual turbine/controller tuning requires an input file. This input file is generically dubbed “DISCON.IN’’. In OpenFAST, the DLL_InFile parameter should be set to point to the desired input file. The ROSCO toolbox is used to automatically generate the input file. These instructions are provided in the instructions for Standard ROSCO Workflow.

Technical Documentation

A publication highlighting much of the theory behind the controller tuning and implementation methods can be found at: https://wes.copernicus.org/preprints/wes-2021-19/

Survey

Please help us better understand the ROSCO user-base and how we can improve ROSCO through this brief survey:

Directory

• 1. Installing the ROSCO tools
  • 1.1. ROSCO controller
    • 1.1.1. Anaconda download for non-developers
    • 1.1.2. CMake for developers (Mac/linux)
    • 1.1.3. CMake for developers/32-bit (Windows)
  • 1.2. Full ROSCO toolbox
    • 1.2.1. Installing
    • 1.2.2. Updating the ROSCO Toolbox
    • 1.2.3. Getting Started
• 2. Standard ROSCO Workflow
  • 2.1. Reading Turbine Models
  • 2.2. Tuning Controllers and Generating DISCON.IN
  • 2.3. Running OpenFAST Simulations
  • 2.4. Testing ROSCO
• 3. ROSCO Toolbox Structure
  • 3.1. File Structure
    • 3.1.1. ROSCO_toolbox
    • 3.1.2. Examples
    • 3.1.3. Matlab_Toolbox
    • 3.1.4. ROSCO_testing
    • 3.1.5. Test_Cases
    • 3.1.6. Tune_Cases
  • 3.2. The ROSCO Toolbox Tuning File
• 4. ROSCO Controller Structure
  • 4.1. File Structure
  • 4.2. The DISCON.IN file

License Copyright 2020 NREL

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.