Sensorless position control of switched reluctance generator for wind turbine

This paper presents a new sensorless position control method of switched reluctance generator for wind turbine by injecting voltage pulse into one unenergized phase. The method to choose starting phase is also presented by comparing three phase detected current value simultaneously. The proposed control method does not require external hardware or complex inductance calculation and hence the reliability of the scheme is expected to be good while not adding to the system cost. With this it is possible to eliminate the use of the position encoder, which can improve the system reliability and reduce the system maintenance. A 3kW switched reluctance wind generator system is designed and built in the field. Some experimental results are presented to validate the proposed sensorless position control method of switched reluctance generator for wind turbine.