IIT Roorkee is among the most prestigious
educational institutions of India. Department of Electrical Engineering
recently placed an order of a Wind Turbine Emulator, a product of Wind Energy
Lab with Ecosense.
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 Induction
generator/ Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator, speed of which is controlled
as per the speed reference calculated by solving the mathematical model of wind
turbine. An induction generator is coupled to the DC motor and bidirectional
inverter is connected to the terminals of the generator. Researcher can execute
the mathematical models of their newly developed or modified wind turbine and
can simulate the speed/power of profile of turbine on hardware environment
directly for different wind speeds & pitch angle.
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 to conduct their research.