IIT Madras is one of the most
popular and best college for pursuing engineering. Department of Electrical
Engineering, IIT Madras recently ordered a Wind Turbine Emulator from Ecosense
with a few customizations. One of the major customizations include replacing
PMSG motor for generation to DFIG whose GSC is controlled using PXI controller
and RSC is controlled using NI FPGA controller.
Wind Energy Lab provides an end-to-end learning experience of Wind Energy based electrical power generation. The lab consists of two products Wind Energy Training system which gives user, insight about the individual components and power generation using wind energy, the other product Wind Turbine Emulator is mainly research oriented equipment which enables user to do research in the field of Wind Energy power generation by tweaking the controls and power electronics of the system.
Wind turbine emulator mimics the behaviour of wind turbine for hardware level simulations. This system has a DC motor coupled with the DFIG generator, where DC motor is acting as the prime mover and DFIG is acting as the generator of the Wind Turbine. The controls are designed as such that the DFIG should exactly emulate Wind Turbine Generator characteristics. The highlight of the system is it’s open source control which can be edited and modified to implement new controls and algorithms.
Exploiting wind energy and
actively developing wind power generation have a great significance to solve
the global energy and environmental crisis. Research and experiments on wind
power generation system are difficult to carryout due to the limitation of
severe conditions of wind farm and high cost. The wind turbine emulator system
can substitute the actual wind turbine by calculating the output torque with
the wind turbine torque model and rapidly producing a torque corresponding to
the current wind condition. It not only has the same mechanical characteristic
with the actual wind turbine, but also provides controllable equivalent wind
energy. So, it can be used in the design, estimation and test application of
the Wind Power Generation System which greatly improves the efficiency and
validity of research development.
Ecosense’s Wind Turbine Emulator system enables user to do research in the field of Microgrid management, load side management, priority allocation to renewable sources etc. Ecosense’s Wind turbine Emulator is an open-source system where a user can reprogram, rewire and revise the system to carry out their research goals. All the sources are independent of each other and research can also be carried out on each of the sources independently. Ecosense provides source file based on LabVIEW platform which can be easily modified as per the user’s liking. Ecosense appreciates and also provide an active support to users carrying out their research.
After successful installation of system, Product Demonstration is conducted. The Product Demonstration was focused on how to efficiently utilize the system.