SIMULATION OF WIND TURBINE EMULATOR USING DC MOTOR

Abstract

Global warming and increasing oil prices has led the world to discover new energy resources which are environment friendly and are found in abundance so that they never go out of stock. Wind energy is one of the forms of renewable source of energy which can be used to generate electrical energy. In wind technology, a wind turbine is used to convert the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy which is connected to a generator with or without a gearbox to produce electricity. A generator is used to convert the mechanical energy coming out of turbine rotor into electrical energy and this energy can be used in standalone systems or connected to the grid. This whole system from i.e. wind turbine to grid is known as wind energy conversion system. Wind turbines are large in size and are mounted on a tower at a height, so study of wind turbines is a troublesome and unpleasant issue. Moreover, wind is also arbitrary in nature and hence wind speeds change constantly with time. So to study wind turbine and see the performance of wind turbines on different conditions of wind speeds and pitch angle, a turbine model is created in Matlab environment which is run through a motor giving the same characteristics of turbine and the name given to such configuration is wind turbine emulator. In this thesis, wind turbine emulator is designed using a separately excited direct current motor operating with a chopper circuit where error control is achieved through a proportional integral controller. This wind turbine emulator is then directly connected to permanent magnet synchronous generator to check if the generator could build up the required rated voltage on a specified load.