Control of a variable speed stand alone wind energy supply system

This paper presents a simple control strategy for the operation of a variable speed stand-alone wind turbine with a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The PMSG is connected to a three phase resistive load through a switch mode rectifier and a voltage source inverter. Control of the generator side switch mode rectifier is used to achieve maximum power extraction from wind power. Control of the DC-DC bidirectional buck-boost converter, which is connected between batteries bank and DC-link voltage, is used to maintain the DC-link voltage at a constant value. It is also used to make the batteries bank stores a surplus of wind energy and supplies this energy to the load during a wind power shortage. The load side voltage source inverter uses a relatively complex vector control scheme to control the output load voltage in terms of amplitude and frequency. The control strategy works under wind speed variation as well as with variable load. Extensive simulations have been performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Simulation results demonstrate that the controller performs very well in spite of variation in wind speed and load.