Real-time wind turbine emulator for testing wind energy conversion systems

The paper presents the development of wind turbine emulator which consists of an induction motor, torque inverter and real-time interface card. The wind turbine emulator system includes wind speed profiles, mathematical model of wind turbines, modeling of rotor blade characteristics and modeling of rotor inertia. Wind speed can be easily programmed based on white noise random model, or recorded wind speed or manual speed reference. The developed algorithm was implemented by DS1104 real-time interface card and Matlab/Simulink realtime control programming. The wind turbine emulator was tested in laboratory with 1 kW separate excited dc generator. The power responses, torque responses and wind speed responses confirm that the system can perform satisfactorily under step commands, wind speed profiles and rotor blade sizes.