High-Order Sliding Mode Control of a Marine Current Turbine Driven Doubly-Fed Induction Generator

Abstract

International audienceThis paper deals with the speed control of a variable speed doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG)-based marine current turbine (MCT). To increase the generated power and therefore the efficiency of an MCT, a nonlinear controller has been proposed. DFIG has been already considered for similar applications, particularly wind turbine systems using mainly proportional-integral (PI) controllers. However, such kinds of controllers do not adequately handle some tidal resource characteristics such as turbulence and swell effects. These may decrease MCT performances. Moreover, DFIG parameter variations should be accounted for. Therefore, a robust nonlinear control strategy, namely high-order sliding mode (HOSM) control, is proposed. This control strategy relies on the resource and the marine turbine models that were validated by experimental data. The sensitivity of the proposed control strategy is analyzed regarding the swell effect as it is considered as the most disturbing one for the resource model. Tidal current data from the Raz de Sein (Brittany, France) are used to run simulations of a 7.5-kW prototype over various flow regimes. Simulation results are presented and fully analyzed

2002–2012: 10 Years of Research Progress in Horizontal-Axis Marine Current Turbines

“…Ben Elghali and co-workers from France have been actively involved in research on HAMCT generator performance since 2007 [19,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112]. They started by developing a Matlab-Simulink model to model the marine current energy [19] and step-by-step, they validated the developed model for different generator-based HAMCTs.…”

“…They started by developing a Matlab-Simulink model to model the marine current energy [19] and step-by-step, they validated the developed model for different generator-based HAMCTs. They have simulated the performance of doubly-fed induction generators (DFIGs) [103,106], permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) [109,110], modified DFIGs and PMSGs [105,107,108] and comparisons between DFIGs and PMSGs [109,111]. It was not until 2011 that Ben Elghali and co-workers started to conduct experiments and validate the control systems they had proposed.…”

Generator Systems for Marine Current Turbine Applications: A Comparative Study

“…Considering this scheme, it can be no-0364-9059/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE ticed that a global multiphysics approach must be considered to study the behavior of an MCT. So a simulation tool able to predict the behavior of such a system must comprise the resource, the hydrodynamic turbine, the generator, the drive, and grid connection models [2], [3].…”

“…The implemented model will allow the user to compute tidal velocities in a predefined time range (Fig. 3) [3].…”

“…Therefore, it is necessary to develop simulation environments to estimate marine current turbine global behavior and potential energy capture from the various sites. For that purpose, the authors have previously elaborated on such an environment [2], [3]. Indeed, this tool associates the resource model, the hydrodynamic turbine model, and electrical generator models in a multiphysics approach.…”