A novel control strategy of a variable-speed doubly-fed-induction-generator-based wind energy conversion system

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to address the issue of control of a variable-speed wind turbine based on doubly-fed induction generators. In this work, an effort is made to extract the maximum efficiency from a doubly-fed induction generator-based variable-speed wind turbine by controlling the rotor current. In the first step, a maximum power point tracking technique is used to extract the maximum power from the turbine. Then a stator-flux-oriented vector control strategy is employed to control the rotor-side current. Subsequently, a grid voltage vector-oriented control strategy is used to control the grid-side system of the grid-connected generator. Considering the nonlinearity and parameter uncertainty of the system, an active disturbance rejection controller with a sliding-mode-based extended-state observer is developed for the above-mentioned control strategies. Furthermore, the stability of the controller is tested and the performance of the controller is compared with the classical proportional–integral controller based on disturbance rejection, robustness and tracking capability in a highly non-linear wind speed variation scenario. Modelling, control and comparison are conducted in the MATLAB®/Simulink® environment. Finally, a real-time hardware set-up is presented using the dSPACE ds-1104 R&D processing board to validate the control scheme. From the result of the experiments, it is seen that the proposed controller takes 10–15 control cycles to settle to its steady-state values, depending on the control loop, whereas the conventional proportional–integral controller takes 60–75 control cycles. As a result, the settling time for the proposed control scheme is shorter than that of the proportional–integral controller.