IIT Madras is one of the most popular and best college for pursuing engineering. Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras recently ordered a Wind Turbine Emulator from Ecosense with a few customizations. One of the major customizations include replacing PMSG motor for generation to DFIG whose GSC is controlled using PXI controller and RSC is controlled using NI FPGA controller.
Why Ecosense’s Wind Energy Lab?
Wind Energy Lab provides an end-to-end learning experience of Wind Energy based electrical power generation. The lab consists of two products Wind Energy Training system which gives user, insight about the individual components and power generation using wind energy, the other product Wind Turbine Emulator is mainly research oriented equipment which enables user to do research in the field of Wind Energy power generation by tweaking the controls and power electronics of the system.
Wind Turbine Emulator System
Wind turbine emulator mimics the behaviour of wind turbine for hardware level simulations. This system has a DC motor coupled with the DFIG generator, where DC motor is acting as the prime mover and DFIG is acting as the generator of the Wind Turbine. The controls are designed as such that the DFIG should exactly emulate Wind Turbine Generator characteristics. The highlight of the system is it’s open source control which can be edited and modified to implement new controls and algorithms.
Why Emulator?
Exploiting wind energy and actively developing wind power generation have a great significance to solve the global energy and environmental crisis. Research and experiments on wind power generation system are difficult to carryout due to the limitation of severe conditions of wind farm and high cost. The wind turbine emulator system can substitute the actual wind turbine by calculating the output torque with the wind turbine torque model and rapidly producing a torque corresponding to the current wind condition. It not only has the same mechanical characteristic with the actual wind turbine, but also provides controllable equivalent wind energy. So, it can be used in the design, estimation and test application of the Wind Power Generation System which greatly improves the efficiency and validity of research development.
Technical Characteristics of Wind Turbine Emulator System
• Ability to track torque-speed and power-speed characteristics of a wind turbine at different wind speeds and pitch angle
• Plotting Cp-λ curve to show the turbine characteristics at a particular pitch angle
• Real time tracking of λ could be utilized to track the optimal λ of a turbine
• Maximum power point tracking opportunity based on the generated voltage and current feedback
• Ability to control DC link voltage using bidirectional converter in stand-alone mode
• Research on Microgrid possible as the DC link can accommodate other renewable sources such as PV
• Power flow and quality supplied to the grid can be controlled and analysed
• Further exploration of control techniques for smart grid implementation possible
• Continuous sensing of grid side voltage and currents provide opportunity to implement advanced control algorithms to control the behaviour as per grid conditions
• Implementing different maximum power point algorithm in Wind Turbine Emulator system
• Maintaining minimum reactive power at inverter output to achieve unity power factor and maximize the usable power generation
• Using different differential equations to emulate different Wind Turbine models
• Implementing Anti-islanding protection using fault detection at different loads
Ecosense installed DFIG based Wind Turbine Emulator with PXI controller at IIT Madras
Advantages of Ecosense’s Wind Turbine Emulator
Ecosense’s Wind Turbine Emulator system enables user to do research in the field of Microgrid management, load side management, priority allocation to renewable sources etc. Ecosense’s Wind turbine Emulator is an open-source system where a user can reprogram, rewire and revise the system to carry out their research goals. All the sources are independent of each other and research can also be carried out on each of the sources independently. Ecosense provides source file based on LabVIEW platform which can be easily modified as per the user’s liking. Ecosense appreciates and also provide an active support to users carrying out their research.
Product Demonstration Conducted
After successful installation of system, Product Demonstration is conducted. The Product Demonstration was focused on how to efficiently utilize the system.