Multimegawatt wind-turbine systems, often organized in a wind park, are the backbone of the power generation based on renewable-energy systems. This paper reviews the most-adopted wind-turbine systems, the adopted generators, the topologies of the converters, the generator control and grid connection issues, as well as their arrangement in wind parks.

Overview of Multi-MW Wind Turbines and Wind Parks

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the state-of-the-art and emerging wind energy technologies from the electrical engineering perspective. In an attempt to decrease cost of energy, increase the wind energy conversion efficiency, reliability, power density, and comply with the stringent grid codes, the electric generators and power electronic converters have emerged in a rigorous manner. From the market based survey, the most successful generator-converter configurations are addressed along with few promising topologies available in the literature. The back-to-back connected converters, passive generator-side converters, converters for multiphase generators, and converters without intermediate dc-link are investigated for high-power wind energy conversion systems (WECS), and presented in low and medium voltage category. The onshore and offshore wind farm configurations are analyzed with respect to the series/parallel connection of wind turbine ac/dc output terminals, and high voltage ac/dc transmission. The fault-ride through compliance methods used in the induction and synchronous generator based WECS are also discussed. The past, present and future trends in megawatt WECS are reviewed in terms of mechanical and electrical technologies, integration to power systems, and control theory. The important survey results, and technical merits and demerits of various WECS electrical systems are summarized by tables. The list of current and future wind turbines are also provided along with technical details.

High-Power Wind Energy Conversion Systems: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Technologies

This paper quantifies the capability of providing a short-term excess active power support of a commercial multi-megawatt variable speed wind turbine (VSWT) and generalizes the findings by considering different wind turbine (WT) physical parameters in a wider range from the example case. The paper also identifies some possible applications of it, in particular, in a hydro dominated system. To be able to quantify the system characteristic, a delay model of the studied hydro system is developed. Due to the fact that the initial power surge of a hydro turbine is opposite to that desired, the short-term extra active power support from a wind farm (WF) could be beneficial for a hydro dominated system in arresting the initial frequency fall, which corresponds to an improvement in the system temporary minimum frequency (TMF). The improvements in the TMF are calculated by using both the developed delay model and a detailed model, and the results show good agreement. It is shown that the WT under consideration can provide a 0.1 pu extra active power support for 10 s quite easily which is twice the Hydro-Quebec requirement.

Temporary Primary Frequency Control Support by Variable Speed Wind Turbines— Potential and Applications

This paper presents a novel control strategy for the operation of a direct-drive permanent-magnet synchronous-generator-based stand-alone variable-speed wind turbine. The control strategy for the generator-side converter with maximum power extraction is presented. The stand-alone control is featured with output voltage and frequency controller that is capable of handling variable load. The potential excess of power is dissipated in the dump-load resistor with the chopper control, and the dc-link voltage is maintained. Dynamic representation of dc bus and small-signal analysis are presented. Simulation results show that the controllers can extract maximum power and regulate the voltage and frequency under varying wind and load conditions. The controller shows very good dynamic and steady-state performance.

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A Novel Control Strategy for a Variable-Speed Wind Turbine With a Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Generator

With the advances of power electronic technology, direct-driven permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) have increasingly drawn the interest of wind turbine manufacturers. At the present time, a commercial PMSG wind turbine primarily makes use of a passive rectifier followed by an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) inverter. Although a PMSG wind turbine with two back-to-back voltage source IGBT converters is considered more efficient, it has not been widely adopted by the wind power industry. This paper investigates both the conventional and a novel vector control mechanism for a PMSG wind turbine that has two side-by-side voltage source pulsewidth modulation converters. The proposed approach is based on a direct-current vector control mechanism for control of both machine- and grid-side converters of a PMSG wind turbine. Then, an optimal control strategy is developed for integrated control of PMSG maximum power extraction, reactive power, and grid voltage support controls. A transient system simulation using SimPowerSystem is built to investigate the performance of the conventional and proposed control techniques for the PMSG wind turbine under steady and gusty wind conditions. This paper shows that when using the direct-current vector control structure, a PMSG system has excellent performance in various aspects.

Optimal and Direct-Current Vector Control of Direct-Driven PMSG Wind Turbines

Wind energy is a prominent area of application of variable-speed generators operating on the constant grid frequency. This paper describes the operation and control of one of these variable-speed wind generators: the direct driven permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). This generator is connected to the power network by means of a fully controlled frequency converter, which consists of a pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) rectifier, an intermediate dc circuit, and a PWM inverter. The generator is controlled to obtain maximum power from the incident wind with maximum efficiency under different load conditions. Vector control of the grid-side inverter allows power factor regulation of the windmill. This paper shows the dynamic performance of the complete system. Different experimental tests in a 3-kW prototype have been carried out to verify the benefits of the proposed system.

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Control of permanent-magnet generators applied to variable-speed wind-energy systems connected to the grid

This paper presents a laboratory set-up to be used as wind turbine emulator. The emulator can be used for research applications to drive an electrical generator in a similar way as a wind turbine, by reproducing the torque developed by a wind turbine for a given wind velocity. Also, it can be used as an educational tool to teach the behaviour, operation and control of a wind turbine. In this work, the turbine torque is reproduced by a DC drive. A control program reads wind velocities from an input file and calculates torque reference to the DC drive. A commercial DC drive with torque control is used to apply the commanded torque to the shaft of the electrical generator. Both, stall wind turbines and pitch controlled wind turbines can be emulated in the laboratory set-up. The emulator reproduced not only the mean torque of the turbine but also the oscillating torque due to wind shear and tower shadow. This functionality of the emulator can be used to investigate the effect of these phenomena in power quality. Experimental results are given which show that the emulator is an useful tool for the purposes already mentioned.

M. Chinchilla

Papers

Control of permanent-magnet generators applied to variable-speed wind-energy systems connected to the grid

Laboratory set-up for wind turbine emulation