Development of Wind Turbine Simulator for Wind Energy Conversion Systems based on Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor

In the wind energy conversion system, the wind turbine captures the wind energy. Then the generator changes it to the electrical power. So the characteristic of the wind turbine is very important. For some laboratories that don’t have the practical wind turbine, it is very convenience to use the wind turbine simulator instead of the real wind turbine. The paper introduces the structure and characteristic of the wind turbine simulator for Wind energy conversion systems using a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The wind turbine simulator consists of a microcontroller, an intelligent power module (IPM) inverter, a PMSM and a control desk on the computer. The control desk obtains the wind speed and calculates the theoretical torque of a real wind turbine by using the wind turbine characteristics and the rotation speed of PMSM. Then the output torque of the PMSM can be regulated by controlling the stator current and frequency. Hence, the inverter driven PMSM can work like a real wind turbine. In this paper, torque oscillation produced by tower shadow and the wind shear has been considered. Simulation results verify the analysis and the conclusion.