Performance of a vertical wind turbine with permanent magnet synchronous generator

Abstract

The performance of a wind energy conversion system based on a vertical axis wind turbine and a permanent magnet synchronous generator was evaluated in a computational study. A power point tracking approach was used to determine the maximum output power from the system. The technique used in the study utilised the voltage and current from the generator as inputs to generate a reference voltage, which was then compared with the direct current output voltage obtained at the load resistor. A proportional integral controller was used to tune the error between the reference and output voltage. The generated output was then compared with a pulse generator before being fed to the insulated-gate bipolar transistor switch as a pulse width modulation signal. In the software, a system model was designed, and its simulation analysis was done. The input parameters for the wind turbines, generator and boost converters were selected to achieve optimal output in terms of voltage, current, power, rotor speed, power coefficient, electromagnetic torque and mechanical torque. The computational results of the simulated wind energy conversion system were gathered and its performance examined.