MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING SCHEME FOR WIND ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEM

Abstract

Wind is a variable source of energy and therefore, mostly variable speed generators are used in wind generation systems. Direct driven permanent magnet synchronous generator has several advantages over other types of generators and it has been used in the proposed system. For efficient exploitation of available energy at any point of time, suitable control methods must be incorporated to extract maximum power from wind at any particular speed. These are called Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) methods. Available methods require the knowledge of wind turbine characteristics or wind/rotor speed measurements as the control parameter. This feature makes them highly dependent on the accuracy of measuring devices and the speed of response is slow. Therefore, a control strategy has been proposed to provide a faster and dynamic solution to the wind energy conversion system. The system has been realized using a permanent magnet synchronous generator, a three phase diode rectifier, a DC/DC boost converter and a PWM fed voltage source inverter feeding a three phase load. MPPT algorithm developed controls the switching of the boost converter. Modeling and simulation of the entire system has been done using MATLAB/SIMULINK® software for fixed and variable wind speed scenario using different load conditions. The results show, at least in principle, that the developed scheme is suitable for wind turbine generator systems.