Project Introduction: Conventional wind turbine controllers have only limited resources, and can only offer restricted monitoring and diagnostic functions. System developers expect controllers to not only monitor environmental conditions, temperatures and pressures in the hydraulic system, including rotation speeds and vibrations, but also allow remote management and diagnostics through a network.

System Requirements: The customer required a controller that could receive wind data from an anemometer, direct the nacelle and rotor blade in order to catch the wind, and brake the blades from moving too fast and becoming damaged, which led to the following requirements:

• An open PC-based control platform to provide compatibility with various I/O peripherals and unexpected application adjustments
• A compact system that could fit into space limited towers and also had front accessible I/O's
• Sufficient processing power
• No moving parts, wide temperature, shock and vibration tolerance
• Embedded OS for real-time control

Project Implementation:

UNO-1150: AMD Gx2 embedded computer with 2 x LAN, 3 x COM, 2 xUSB

System Description: The UNO-1150 is installed inside the wind power turbine. Hundreds of I/O distributed over the nacelle, such as wind speed and direction were passed to the UNO-1150 controller. The environmental conditions, temperatures and pressures in the hydraulic system, rotation speeds and vibrations are all monitored. The UNO-1150 also processes this information and can quickly adjust the rotor blade to the available wind. However, when the wind is too strong, the UNO-1150 can engage the brake to stop the rotor blade from damaging. The embedded OS in the system ensures the general control and regulation lies in the "real time" time range.

The UNO-1150 also links to the main monitoring network and frequency converter monitors. The information in the nacelle could be transferred via Ethernet, fiber optic or serial COM port. This shows the implementation flexibility and the reliability of the UNO-1150 about the information redundancy.

Conclusion: The UNO-1150 is a compact system with Open PC Based Control platform. It is designed fanless, and cableless for harsh, varied environments with a wide range temperature. The high vibration and shock tolerance caused by the blade rotation was within the tolerance of range of UNO-1150. These features not only increase reliability but also reduce the costs of maintenance.

From the implementation point of view, the front access I/O design saves the time on integration and wiring. The DIN rail mounting form factor makes the UNO controller easily align together with other device such as BUS coupler or Field Bus circuit without occupying extra space. The on x86 computer architecture extend the possibility for future application adjustment and I/O enhancement without a lot of integration effort.

Equipped with an AMD Geode GX-533 CPU and 256MB memory, UNO-1150 provides sufficient computing power to handle multiple tasks. The Dual Ethernet on the system allows remote network management without monitor the system on site.