Wind Power Plant (DL-WPP)

This trainer allows the students to study the functions and operations of a modern wind power plant simulating on it the effects of the wind force. It is designed starting with a few related concepts providing in-depth coverage of basic topics related to the field of electrical energy produced from the wind and some major aspects about Wind Power Plant management.

This system operates through a brushless machine and the simulation software, and the Doubly-fed Asynchronous Generator (DFAG) or (DFIG – Doubly-fed Induction Generator) allows a practical and effective approach to this trainer.

Doubly fed electrical generators are like AC electric generators but have additional features which allow them to run at speeds slightly above or below their natural synchronous speed. This is useful for large variable speed wind turbines because wind speed can change suddenly.

The DFAG can change the speed of the generator rotor by means of controlling the frequency of the rotor field current. When a gust of wind hits a wind turbine, the blades try to speed up, but a synchronous generator is locked to the speed of the power grid and cannot speed up. So large forces are developed in the hub, gearbox, and generator as the power grid pushes back. This causes wear and damage to the mechanism. If the turbine is allowed to speed up immediately when hit by a wind gust, the stresses are lower with the power from the wind gust still being converted to useful electricity.

One approach to allowing wind turbine speed to vary is to accept whatever frequency the generator produces, convert it to DC, and then convert it to AC at the desired output frequency using an inverter. This is common for small house and farm wind turbines. But the inverters required for megawatt-scale wind turbines are large and expensive.

This proposed trainer has a modular structure that will grant teachers and students extreme flexibility during the study of the related topics and the performance of the experiments.

It is divided, from the hardware point of view, in:

For the Wind sub-model, it has the architecture shown below:

The frame includes all the remaining modules of the DL WPP trainer such as:

And the main essential control unit of the trainer is the Back-to back converter

This control unit allows approaching and theoretically in depth analyzing the following topics:

As previously mentioned, this trainer is complete with interactive multimedia SCADA software that can control and set several operations of the system; with this software it is possible to adjust the wind speed and profile and to examine the effects on the operating functions of a real Wind Power Plant. Another important feature of this software is related to the possibility to control, parameterize and visualize the obtained data.