Development of an Isolated Small Wind Turbine Emulator

Abstract

An isolated small wind turbine emulator based on a separately excited DC motor is developed to evaluate the performance of small wind turbine control strategies. The test rig consists of a 3HP separately excited DC motor coupled to a synchronous generator. A dump load is connected to the generator through a buck-boost converter controlled by a microcontroller. Wind turbine rotor and furling dynamics are incorporated in the emulator with the use of a PC based wind turbine model. Emulation of the wind turbine is achieved by running the DC motor to track the theoretical rotational speed of the wind turbine rotor. A dynamic maximum power controller is implemented and tested. The controller uses the wind speed and rotor speed information to control the duty cycle of the buck-boost converter in order to operate the wind turbine at the optimum tip speed ratio. Test results indicate that the proposed system accurately emulates the behavior of a small wind turbine system.

Design and development of real-time small-scale wind turbine simulator

“…Furling mechanism turns the rotor by the angle θ degrees and this results in reduction in the extracted aerodynamic power [6]. Relation between wind speed and furling angle given by (3) as in [7] is used in this work.…”

An Experimental Hybrid Control Approach for Wind Turbine Emulator

“…The motor is driven by a controlled power converter. Based on the literature survey, a motor (ac or dc), a PC with the necessary software installed, an intelligent power module, a controller, and a feedback mechanism are the main components of any WTE [6], [7], [8], [9]. Whereas, remaining parts, i.e.…”

“…The existing literature provides information on the properties of wind turbines and their mathematical modeling [6], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. Different models of aerodynamic analysis of wind turbines can be found in [20].…”

“…A detailed literature review has shown that several researchers have utilized different motor types, such as separately excited dc motors, Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM), squirrel cage induction motors, and servomotors, etc. Furthermore, it has been noted that in the past, researchers often developed WTE based on a dc motor [6], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40] with current control (i.e. torque control on its shaft).…”