Performance study of start-up control techniques in a Wind Energy Conversion System with induction generator

This paper studies the performance of a Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS) with an induction generator under various start-up control techniques. The capability of self-excitation of the induction generator using three control techniques is examined. The generator is connected to the power grid by means of a fully controlled frequency converter which consists of a pulse-width modulation (PWM) rectifier, an intermediate dc-link circuit and a PWM inverter. Field oriented control is applied and Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) of the wind turbine is achieved by using the Perturb & Observe (P&O) control technique. A squirrel cage induction generator is considered in this paper. The control system has been simulated using the Matlab/Simulink software and several simulation results are presented in order to demonstrate the performance of the WECS under the examined start-up control techniques.