Large scale wind energy conversion system using permanent magnet synchronous generator

Renewable energy resources are getting increased attention from researchers because of depleting fossil resources, increasing fuel prices and the concern of climate change and global warming. In a country like India where long coastal line is available, offshore wind farms are one of the attractive options. Over last two decades the wind power penetration in to the grid is increasing at a very fast rate and therefore the wind farms are now required to participate actively in grid operation by an appropriate generation control. The advantage of using a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator for wind energy conversion systems is that its efficiency is higher compared to other variable speed WT configurations, its full scale converter allows full controllability, gearbox can be omitted by using higher number of poles of PMSG. This paper proposes the complete modeling and simulation, and analysis of a PMSG based WECS in terms of its power quality, range of wind speed that it can handle and the power balance when the machine is operating under varying wind velocity conditions. Vector control strategy is employed for both the converters connected, in cascade, between generator and the power grid. The WECS is analyzed under both partial and full-load regime. Generator control is applied for power optimization when wind speed is less than rated speed and pitch control is applied for speeds higher than rated speed but below cut-out speed.