Design and manufacture of small-scale wind turbine simulator to emulate torque response of MW wind turbine

Abstract

Small-scale wind turbine simulators have been used in laboratories in order to verify power control of real-world large multi-MW wind turbines. The response speed of multi-MW wind turbines is so slow that the response time considerably exceeds several seconds. This fact should be considered in the design of small-scale wind turbine simulators. In this paper, a 3.5 kW wind turbine simulator is designed and manufactured in order to emulate torque response of a 2 MW wind turbine. The small-scale wind turbine simulator consists of a motor, a gear box, a flywheel, and a generator. Two main design parameters are the rotor radius and the mass moment of inertia of the flywheel. The main design objective is to make the 3.5 kW wind turbine simulator have the similar both time constant and wind speed range for optimal TSR (tip speed ratio) to those of the target 2 MW wind turbine. Through numerical simulations and experiments for step response, we demonstrate that the designed and manufactured 3.5 kW wind turbine simulator has the response speed similar to that of the 2MW wind turbine in the aspect of torque response.