A Novel GRID Integrated WECs with SMC for Wind Farm Commitment

Abstract

This paper presents a GRID integrated Wind Energy Conversion Systems (WECs) with Indirect Matrix Converter (IMC) for peak power management. IMC is an AC-AC converter to synchronize variable frequency wind energy with GRID. The importance of Sparse Matrix Converter (SMC) (i.e. one of the IMC types) is gaining importance due to less number of switch count. Here an SMC is used to integrate the WECs with GRID. Nowadays peak power management is very much ubiquitous to enhance the efficiency of GRID as well as for uninterrupted power supply at the demand side. As IMC employs a two-stage energy conversion system (rectification and inversion), virtual DC-link has been utilized to maintain uniform power at the GRID side for the first time in the literature. In order to ensure consistent power at the GRID end at high wind speeds, power is stored in a battery bank via a virtual DC connection, and during low wind speeds, power is drawn back from the battery through the DC link. For the purpose of charging the battery, the variable DC of the virtual DC connection is converted to fixed DC using a bi-directional buck-boost converter. The Voltage Oriented Control (VOC) approach is used to satisfy the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) criterion in WECs. Active and reactive power are both under the control due to the VOC scheme. For GRID integration, the variable frequency voltage from wind energy is changed to fixed frequency (50Hz) voltage using the space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technology.