Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Wind Farm Lab Test-Bench
for Research/Education on Optimum
Design and Cooperative Control
of Wind Turbines
Mario García-Sanz, Harry Labrie and Julio Cesar Cavalcanti
Abstract This chapter presents a low-cost, flexible lab test-bench wind farm for
advanced research and education on wind turbine and wind farm design and
control. The mechanical, electrical, electronic and control system design of the
wind turbines, along with the dynamic models, parameters and classical pitch and
torque controllers are introduced in detail. Furthermore, the study presents a
variety of experiments that (a) quantifies the effect of the number of blades in the
aerodynamic efficiency, (b) estimates the generator efficiency, (c) validates the
rotor-speed pitch control system, (d) proves the concept of maximum power point
tracking for individual wind turbines, (e) estimates the aerodynamic C
p
/k char-
acteristics, (f) calculates the power curve, and (g) studies the effect of wind farm
topology configurations on the individual and global power efficiency. The
experimental results prove that the dynamics of the test-bench corresponds well
with full-scale wind turbines. This fact makes the test-bench wind farm appro-
priate for advanced research and education in wind energy systems.
Keywords Wind turbine design
Wind turbine modeling
Turbine parameter
identification
Wind turbine control
Pitch control
Torque control
Wind farm
hierarchical control
