Design and Implementation of a Low Power Wind Turbine Emulator Through the Induction Motor-Permanent Magnet Generator Arrangement

Abstract

This paper presents the design and construction stage of a low power wind turbine emulator, which is used at the laboratory level, to reproduce different wind profiles. There are several types of wind emulators, among which the wind tunnel emulators stand out. These emulators use a motor with a propeller on their axis to obtain the desired wind speed. However, in the present work -and done from a computer- speed control is developed for a three-phase induction motor, thus driving a permanent magnet generator. The motor-generator group is controlled through a program developed in the Labview software. Also, it has the particularity of operating automatically, being able to load different speed data. Such data is associated with a particular power that takes into account the selected wind profile and can operate through manual control of the wind speed. However, this depends on the frequency given. The emulator operation is validated experimentally through two scenarios: the first one emulates the curve presented by the Eolos turbine and subsequently compares the results obtained, whereas the second one loads the wind profile of Uribía-Guajira -a region in Colombia- achieving that the emulated wind profile can be accurately seen in the loaded wind profile.