Comparative Study of Two Types of Wind Turbine Simulators for Wind Energy Conversion System

摘要

Electricity generation using wind energy is becoming the fastest growing source of renewable energy. There are several types of wind turbine simulator (WTS) or emulator for evaluation of wind turbine generators, power electronic converters, and turbine control algorithms. These WTSs have each a different purpose, and have been used to serve the purpose. It is difficult to construct a wind farm using a conventional WTS with motorgenerator (MG) set because of its cost and volume. In this chapter, a WTS composed only of a power converter without an MG set is proposed, and the two types of WTSs for a wind energy conversion system are compared. The conventional WTS with MG set consists of two 10 kW directly coupled permanent magnet synchronous generators, a motor driver, a power converter, and a microcontroller. The microcontroller calculates wind turbine torque or rotation speed for the motor driver. However, the proposed WTS with only a full power converter and without an MG set includes a rectifier which is connected to the grid and the microcontroller. The rectifier is used instead of the generator of the wind conversion system, and just supplies electric power to the grid-connected converter. The microcontroller for only the full power converter type wind simulator simulates status values of the wind turbine. The experimental results show the output power and the rotating speed of two types of wind simulator under varied wind speed conditions. It is expected that the wind farm simulator can be designed using the proposed WTS. The results of the chapter can effectively be employed to design or construct wind farm simulators for testing wind farm controllers.