Optimum control for an autonomous micro hydro power plant with induction generator

This paper deals with the voltage and frequency control of an autonomous induction generator (IG). In order to do that, a voltage source inverter (VSI) with a dump load (DL) circuit on its DC side is employed. The IG frequency is controlled by keeping constant the VSI synchronous frequency. For the IG voltage regulation two cascaded regulators are used, which have as reference the line voltage and the VSI DC voltage, respectively. Then, the DL is replaced with a storage device (SD) consisting in a bidirectional DC/DC converter and a battery bank. Simulations and experiments are carried out in order to investigate the reliability of both configurations.