Reactive power compensation control for stand-alone synchronous generator-based wind energy conversion system

This paper presents a controlled reactive power compensator (RPC) for a stand-alone synchronous generator (SG)-based wind energy conversion system (WECS). The proposed controlled RPC consists of a synchronous condenser (SC), an AC/DC converter whose output supplies the excitation circuit of the SC, and a control scheme that adapts the converter output to supply the field voltage required to fit the power factor to its desired value. A lab-scale system consisting of a WECS, an induction motor acting as lagging power factor load connected to the WECS in addition to the proposed controlled power factor corrector (PFC) was setup in hardware to examine its response using the DSpace 1104. The obtained results justify the validity and applicability of the proposed control scheme as a reliable tool to control the operation of an RPC.