Methods and systems to operate a wind turbine system

A wind turbine system is presented. The wind turbine system includes a wind turbine tower, a plurality of blades, a rotor supported by the wind turbine tower and rotatably coupled to the plurality of blades, a torque control device coupled to the rotor, and a control system programmed to predict an over-speeding time T of an occurrence of an over-speed rotor event based at least in part upon a current rotor acceleration and a current rotor speed, that cannot be compensated by an available counter-torque margin of the torque control device, and, in response, to generate pitch commands for the pitch angles of the plurality of blades to avoid the over-speed rotor event.