The structure of the modern wind turbine is becoming larger and more complex, with the wind rotor exceeding hundreds of meters in diameter. The blade shear force is also becoming increasingly serious below the rated wind speed, which leads to structure fatigue loads and instability of the generator power. For improving the dynamic performance of large wind turbines, it was proposed that individual pitch control (IPC) method was operated below the rated wind speed. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the aerodynamic characteristics of blades and the nonlinear time‐varying pitch control system based on wind shear and the tower shadow effect. The combination of IPC and torque control is used to optimize the control mode of the wind turbine. By fine‐tuning the pitch angle, the unbalanced force on the wind rotor was relieved to achieve the purpose of mitigating fatigue loads. Finally, our experimental results prove the validity of the proposed IPC method below the rated wind speed by showing that it can improve power quality and reduce fatigue loads of the key components without reducing the generator output power. © 2016 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.