Palavras-chave: Aerogerador. Estabilidade de velocidade. Fonte alternativa. Função energia. Limite operacional. LVRT. Método direto. PEBS. xiv xv Abstract A. P. Sohn. Stability assessment of wind turbines via direct method. 138 f. Tese de doutorado, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, 2019.This thesis gives a step forward in the direction of reviewing the problem of transient stability and the theory of PEBS method to include models of renewable power plants and their operational limits. The formulation of direct methods with constraint is accomplished by exploring the theory of constrained dynamic systems and the concept of constrained stability region. In particular, the speed stability of the main wind turbine configurations equipped with an induction generator is analyzed, considering the low voltage ride-through requirement, or LVRT curve, as a constraint to the model. An augmented auxiliary dynamical system is developed to represent the time-dependent LVRT constraint as an equivalent time invariant constraint written in terms of an auxiliary state variable. This auxiliary system has its unconstrained stability region equals to the constrained stability region of the constrained dynamic system. The models are described in the form of algebraic and differential equations. The problem of speed stability and the problem of disconnection of wind turbines due to voltage limits violation are investigated via analysis of stability region of the post-fault equilibrium point and critical clearing times obtained for several perturbations. The results show that: i) for different operational limits and for different parameters of the induction machine, the stability regions for a given operating point can be significantly different, ii) in most cases, the violation of the LVRT curve occurs before the speed instability, which reveals the importance of include operational limits in transient stability analysis and in the formulation of direct methods and iii) in most cases, the developed energy functions to evaluate the problem of speed stability and the problem of voltage limits violation, are generally capable of making good estimates of critical clearing times. The developed studies about the transient stability assessment of different models of wind turbines via direct method contribute with applications that can be used in real-time security assessments of power systems that contemplate renewable power plants and their operational limits.