A Review on Switched Reluctance Generators in Wind Power Applications: Fundamentals, Control and Future Trends

With the ever growing environmental concerns, renewable energy sources emerge as a promise of clean and abundant energy, enabling long-term sustainable development. In this context, wind power gained significant interest due to its relative low cost and availability. Switched reluctance generators (SRGs) are suitable candidates for wind energy conversion systems, as they present a simple structure, robustness, a wide range of speed and are capable of operating in harsh environments. The machine, however, poses challenges such as high torque ripple, acoustic noise production and highly nonlinear behavior. Nonetheless, with the use of adequate control strategies, high dynamic performance SRG-based wind energy conversion systems can be achieved. As a result, this article presents a state of the art review of SRGs in wind power applications. First, the fundamentals of the SRG are presented. Next, two categories of firing angle control are reviewed: optimization and closed-loop control. Then, voltage and power control strategies are discussed, being divided in model-independent and model-based approaches. After that, a review on grid-tied SRG-based wind energy conversion systems is carried out. The most common filter topologies as well as the employed control strategies are detailed. Lastly, an outline of the discussed topics is presented and future trends as well as suggestions for future investigation are listed.