Brushless doubly-fed induction generator (BDFIG) has great potential in stand-alone generation applications. Currently, lots of control strategies have been proposed based on the BDFIG d-q model with different machine parameters ignored for simplification, but the simplification influences on model accuracy have not been discussed systematically, and the application ranges are not clear. Therefore, aiming at controller design, this paper provides a comprehensive study on model simplification and parameter estimation of brushless doubly-fed stand- alone generation. Based on the intuitive DFIG-like BDFIG model and the typical electrical quantity relations widely used in stand-alone controller design, steady-state and dynamic parameter sensitivities of BDFIG are analyzed with operation condition fully considered. Based on the analysis, the universal BDFIG simplified d-q model aiming at stand-alone control is evaluated sufficiently, and the application range is clarified. The simplification of control analysis is illustrated, and a highly-targeted and simple parameter estimation method is proposed for simplified modeling and control. Finally, simulations and experiments verify the analysis accuracy of the simplified DFIG-like BDFIG model and the feasibility of the proposed parameter estimation method.