CPS: Medium: Robust Distributed Wind Power Engineering

利用风能是我们这个时代面临的紧迫挑战之一。风力发电系统的规模、复杂性和健壮性提出了引人注目的网络物理系统设计问题。利用普渡大学的物理基础设施，该项目旨在为分布式实时控制开发全面的计算基础设施。与专注于小型编程的传统努力不同，该项目强调可编程性、健壮性、寿命和对综合风电场的保证。拟议的计算基础设施的设计受到风力发电工程背后复杂的网络-物理相互作用的激励，并在其上得到验证。目前还没有高水平的工具来表达风电场的协调行为。利用提出的网络物理系统，该项目旨在验证集成控制技术能够显著提高性能、减少停机时间、提高维护的可预测性、增强运行环境的安全性，具有重大的广泛影响。风能是美国国内生产的清洁、可再生能源中增长最快的能源。这种清洁能源的生产率和寿命的提高，即使是几个百分点的提高，也将对整个能源格局和决策产生重大影响。减少故障和提高安全性将在很大程度上有助于形成公众对风力发电场的看法--加速当地社区的更广泛接受。考虑到“智能”风电场还处于起步阶段，该项目的潜力怎么强调都不为过。

Harnessing wind energy is one of the pressing challenges of our time. The scale, complexity, and robustness of wind power systems present compelling cyber-physical system design issues. Leveraging the physical infrastructure at Purdue, this project aims to develop comprehensive computational infrastructure for distributed real-time control. In contrast to traditional efforts that focus on programming-in-the-small, this project emphasizes programmability, robustness, longevity, and assurance of integrated wind farms. The design of the proposed computational infrastructure is motivated by, and validated on, complex cyber-physical interactions underlying Wind Power Engineering. There are currently no high-level tools for expressing coordinated behavior of wind farms. Using the proposed cyber-physical system, the project aims to validate the thesis that integrated control techniques can significantly improve performance, reduce downtime, improve predictability of maintenance, and enhance safety in operational environments.The project has significant broader impact. Wind energy in the US is the fastest growing source of clean, renewable domestically produced energy. Improvements in productivity and longevity of this clean energy source, even by a few percentage points will have significant impact on the overall energy landscape and decision-making. Mitigating failures and enhancing safety will go a long way towards shaping popular perceptions of wind farms -- accelerating broader acceptance within local communities. Given the relative infancy of "smart" wind farms, the potential of the project cannot be overstated.