Twi-Sliding Mode Control for Efficiency Improvement in Variable Speed Small Wind Turbine Systems

The global electrical energy consumption is rising and there is a steady increase of the demand on the power capacity, efficient production, distribution and utilization of energy. This study focuses on the improvement of overall efficiency in the wind power generation systems (WPGS) by restricting the operation of the wind turbine to the optimal efficiency region, using a control strategy based on two chattering-free sliding mode controllers (SMCs). One of the designed SMCs performs wind turbine speed control, while the other controls the generator torque. The control strategy is designed and simulated by using the Matlab/Simulink. The performance of the control strategy is compared with that of the original model for the wind turbine torque, generator volt/current and the model with the auxiliary power unit (APU) .In this study, in spite of the simple modeling approach taken to model the APU and the optimal efficiency region, an improved performance has been achieved with the new SMC based the strategy.