One-Step-Ahead Adaptive Control for Gas Turbine Power Plants

The feasibility of the application of One-Step-Ahead Adaptive (OSAA) Control technique to a gas turbine power plant is investigated. The OSAA technique is a control algorithm especially suitable for nonlinear and time-varying systems. This technique uses the least square algorithm to estimate in real-time a linear model of the controlled system and uses the estimated linear model to evaluate the feedback control variables. The proposed technique allows to control the gas turbine power plant in a wide range of electric loads due to its intrinsic adaptive capabilities. Moreover, the OSAA control does not require the knowledge of the dynamic characteristics (e.g., state space systems or transfer functions) in order to design the control system. The OSAA control system has been applied to a single shaft gas turbine power plant, which is numerically simulated. The proposed control technique has been tested both in Single-Input Single Output (SISO) mode and in Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) mode. Starting from a steady-state condition, the power plant has been supposed to undergo a step reduction of the electric load. The results show that the OSAA control technique effectively counteracts the load reduction with limited overshoots in the controlled variables and, introducing an integral correction with a negligible static error.