Low Cost Implementation of a Wind Turbine Emulator

This paper presents a low-cost implementation of a hardware-in-the-loop wind turbine emulator (WTE). An induction motor driven by a frequency converter, controlled with a low-cost industrial device, were used to emulate the wind turbine. The controller implements the dynamic equations of the wind turbine, as a function of the wind speed. The induction motor is mechanically coupled with a synchronous generator (the real part of the emulator) designed for a wind energy conversion system. Experimental and simulation results are presented for validation.