Design and Implementation of Flash Memory Life Extension for Wind Turbine Controller Based on Dynamic Storage

The memory required for wind turbine control must have a lifespan of ten years for power-off storage, and the erase and write cycle must meet millions of times. The industry generally uses an external EEPROM to solve this problem with high costs, but restricted by foreign countries constantly. To reduce dependence on EEPROM, lower costs, and meet the requirements of wind turbine controller's memory lifespan, this article proposes a method of using the processor's embedded flash memory and dynamically storing variables at different locations in different storage page spaces to reduce the number of flash erasures, thus increasing flash memory usage time. Tests have shown that the number of flash erasures with this method is only one percent of using fixed addresses to store variables, achieving a 10-year lifespan for the embedded flash memory with only 10,000 erasure and write cycles, meeting the design requirements of power-off retention for wind turbine controllers. Furthermore, this method requires no additional cost with good confidentiality, easy operation, and widely application.