Control of Dual-Airfoil Airborne Wind Energy systems based on nonlinear MPC and MHE

Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) systems generate energy by flying a tethered airfoil across the wind flow at a high velocity. Tethered flight is a fast, strongly nonlinear, unstable and constrained process, motivating control approaches based on fast Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) and state estimation approaches based on Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE). Dual-Airfoil AWE systems, i.e. systems with two airfoils attached to a Y-shaped tether have been shown to be more effective than systems based on a single airfoil. This paper proposes a control scheme for a dual-airfoil AWE system based on NMPC and MHE and studies its performance in a realistic scenario based on state-of-the-art turbulence models.