Hardware-in-the-loop simulations and control designs for a vertical axis wind turbine

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1615021 (Table of Contents)

Control designs play an important role in wind energy conversion systems to achieve high e ciency and performance. In this study, hardware-in-the-loop simulations (HILS) are carried out to design control algorithms for small vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT). In the HILS, the wind torque is calculated from the power coe cient of an experimental VAWT and applied to a motor that drives the generator in the VAWT simulator, which mimics the dynamics of the real VAWT rotor. To deal with the disturbance torques in the VAWT simulator, a virtual plant was introduced to obtain an error between the speeds in HIL system and the plant. This error is used to generate a disturbance torque compensation signal by a proportional-integral (PI) controller. The VAWT simulator successfully mimics the dynamics of the VAWT under various wind speed conditions and provides a realistic framework for control designs. A maximum-power-point-tracking (MPPT) and a proposed simple non-linear control are presented for the control of the VAWT. The control algorithms were tested in the HILS under step up-down, sinusoidal and realistic wind conditions. The output power results are compared with each other and the numerically estimated optimum values. The effects of the permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) parameters on the system e ciency were investigated, and a performance comparison in numerical simulation was made between the present PMSG and two other generators available in the market.