A wind turbine includes a rotor that turns in response to wind force on the rotor blades. In order to prevent damage from excessive wind loads on turbine blades, the rotational speed of a rotor is typically kept at or below a rated design speed for that turbine. Conventionally, wind turbines have used blade pitch control to limit rotor speed and loading from increased wind speed. In many situations, however, blade pitch control is a less-than-ideal solution. For example, transient wind gusts may result in forces that are strong enough to damage equipment when the average wind speed is not high enough to cause damage. These gusts may occur unexpectedly and rapidly. It some such cases, blade pitch actuators may not respond quickly enough to avoid potential damage to the turbine. As another example, there may be a significant difference between wind speed near the ground and wind speed at blade heights corresponding to the top of the rotor's rotational arc. When this occurs, pitching a blade back and forth during each rotation may impose excessive wear on blade pitch actuators.
For these and other reasons, deployable air deflectors have been developed for wind turbine blades. Examples of such deflectors can be found in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 8,192,161, which patent is incorporated by reference herein. There remains a need for additional methods and systems to control air deflection systems incorporated into wind turbine blades.