Hardware implementation of wind turbine emulator and its integration with utility grid

Abstract

Worldwide, renewable energy sources, mainly wind and solar power, prove their efficacy to provide a sustainable solution to meet the growing energy demand. Research and investigation on a natural system are uneconomical and depend upon various environmental and seasonal circumstances. The wind emulator can replicate the static and dynamic behavior of a realistic wind turbine system. This paper presents the wind energy conversion system (WECS) using the wind turbine emulator (WTE) hardware model. The mathematical model of wind turbine has been developed using LabVIEW. The WTE consists DC shunt motor coupled with a three-phase self-excited induction generator (SEIG), which is further integrated with the utility grid through a DC microgrid. Various types of control devices such as DC-DC converter, current PI controller, speed PI controller, rectifier, etc., are employed to control the emulator's performance concerning the rotational speed of the wind turbine. The NI-sbRIO-9607 data card and the graphical user interface (GUI) based on the LabVIEW system provide real-time data acquisition and flexibility in the variation of wind speed and various turbine parameters during experimental validation of WECS. The energy flow with the utility grid, static and dynamic characteristics under different wind speeds are successfully emulated by the experimental setup of a wind turbine emulator