Platform for design, simulation, and experimental evaluation of small wind turbines

Abstract

Wind turbines are complicated systems with different aerodynamic and electromechanical aspects. An integrated platform which includes design, simulation, and experimental evaluation of wind energy conversion systems is very helpful to design, develop, and examine the performance of different wind turbine subsystems. The previous studies exclude such a platform and this study tries to fill this gap. In this study, the blades of a 5.5 kW fixed-speed stall-regulated wind turbine are initially designed then employed in simulation and emulation. The same as the simulation setup, the utilised emulator uses AeroDyn and FAST software tools to model the aerodynamic and mechanical aspects of the turbine in a laboratory environment. The emulator is capable of reproducing the static and dynamic behaviour of the turbine in a laboratory similar to the real turbines. For simulation, the electrical parts are implemented in MATLAB/Simulink, whereas the real electrical parts are used for the emulator. The performance of the turbine with the designed blades is investigated in simulation and emulation considering a simple hub-height and turbulent wind profile, generated by TurbSim software tool based on the IEC standards. Moreover, the start-up process of the wind turbine is evaluated using the wind turbine emulator and the results are discussed.

Design methodology to optimise induction machines based stand‐alone electrical wind water pumping systems

“…The smallest WT available in the FAST CertTest collection is 10 kW which is not appropriate to be used in the present study due to its large size comparing to the size of the water pumping system available in the laboratory. Hence, a 5.5 kW stall‐controlled WT, designed and validated by the emulator in [34], is employed in this study to investigate the performance of the WEWPS. The turbine was aerodynamically designed using the HARP_Opt software [37] which is based on the multi‐objective GA and the blade element momentum theory.…”

“…In this study, a recently developed WTE [34] is employed in the experimental WEWPS set‐up. The emulator utilises the NREL‐FAST package as a dynamic link library in LabVIEW software, where it can communicate with the hardware parts via an Advantech PCI‐1711U data acquisition (DAQ) card.…”

Open direct drive wind turbine virtual simulation experiment system

“…Direct drive permanent magnet wind power generation system adopts brushless and ringless permanent magnet synchronous generator as the main generator, eliminating the gearbox transmission device has the characteristics of simple structure, high efficiency, low maintenance rate and failure rate, and also has the ability to work in harsh environment, so it is suitable for the development direction of large-scale offshore wind power generation, which is in line with the development trend of wind power generation technology. Therefore, the research and teaching of direct drive fan have certain practical significance [1][2][3].The control strategy of direct drive wind turbine is more complicated, the theoretical teaching effect is not so good, and the virtual simulation teaching can help students understand the operation mode of direct drive wind turbine to a certain extent [4].The core contents such as structure composition, operation characteristics [5] and control strategy of the variable pitch control system of wind turbine are studied in depth. Meanwhile, it is difficult for ordinary experimental teaching to achieve teaching effect due to the problems of experimental instruments.…”

Design of Optimal Real Time Emulators for Steam and Wind Turbines for Avoiding Risky Severe Conditions

“…The DC machine with either current control or torque compensation loop has been considered for representing the real wind turbine characteristics using Matlab TM software [32,33]. The verification of the emulator and algorithm has been demonstrated through several tests at step changes in wind speed in [34][35][36]. In [37,38], the open loop emulator for the wind turbine operation has been implemented using DC machine with FPGA board.…”