HILS systems applied to real time emulation for wind energy study

The purpose of this paper is to present a real time wind simulator and it's different uses. Given the fact that the simulator is based on a doubly fed induction generator, one of the uses can be the study of different aspects of grid connection and impacts of different faults that may occur in normal operation of wind systems. The studied system is a variable speed wind turbine system with a Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG). The stator of the generator is directly connected to the grid while the rotor is connected through a back-to-back converter which is dimensioned to stand only for a fraction of the generator rated power. The simulator is developed using Hardware-in the-Loop techniques and in order to provide the static and dynamic characteristics of a wind turbine system. We analyzed and developed an experimental system consisting of two main parts: a real time software simulator and an electromechanical system. The Electromechanical System is composed from three electrical drives: an asynchronous machine that emulates the wind turbine, an asynchronous generator, used to study the energy conversion and grid connection problems. The Software simulator is a supervising and control subsystem and is composed from a computational unit and different interface devices. This subsystem is designed equally to study the capability of the classical network to support wind turbine penetration and grid faults impacts. Experimental results from the simulator are presented in order to compare different simulation procedures.