Remote monitoring and control of wind turbine simulator (a1026-131)

Abstract

The development and installation capacity of wind turbine system are growing rapidly. Most of the wind turbine systems are installed far from the rural area to avoid any obstacle in the wind direction. Therefore, remote monitoring and control of the wind turbine system is necessary to evaluate the efficiency and cost benefit of the wind turbine.

In Laboratory for Clean Energy Research (LaCER), a wind turbine simulator is set up with a 7.5 kW induction generator operated as wind turbine generator; a 11 kW induction motor which acts as a wind turbine to convert the wind energy into the mechanical power. The power conversion system, built with SMA products, converts the generated power into the regulated AC power. Moreover, Sunny WebBox is set up for the monitoring purposes and the variable speed drive system is installed for the control purposes. The installation of monitoring and control of the wind turbine simulator is presented in this report.

Remote monitoring and control of the wind turbine simulator are programmed in LabView software environment. The process of designing and implementing the remote monitoring and control is described in detail in this report. Moreover, the implementation process of the pitch controller in the “wind simulation” mode of control program which will maximize the output power from the wind turbine simulator are stated in this report. Then, the experimental results done under varying wind speeds are discussed and concluded in this report.