This study presents an improved super-twisting sliding mode (SSM) approach to a stand-alone doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) for direct current (DC) generation system. By taking the uncertainties into consideration, an improved SSM regulator based on an extended state observer (ESO) is proposed to enhance the robustness of DC-voltage regulation. Moreover, a novel sinusoidal rotor current calculation method is proposed to generate sinusoidal reference of rotor current. A resonant-based ESO (R-ESO) SSM approach is proposed to regulate rotor current. By applying the R-ESO to estimate the model-related part of DFIG, the tracking performance with respect to a sinusoidal reference is improved. Then, the suppression ability to fifth and seventh harmonic currents are enhanced. Finally, both simulations and experiments on a 6-kW DFIG-DC system are provided to show the effectiveness of DC-voltage regulation and harmonic current suppression of the proposed approach. Nomenclature i, u, φ current, voltage and flux R, L, T resistance, inductance, torque ω sl , ω s slip, and synchronous angular frequency C DC-bus capacitance V dc , i dc DC voltage and current i l DC-load current Superscript