Experimental Design and Development of a DFIG Wind Emulator Setup

In recent years, there has been a significant development in the development of DFIG based wind energy systems with advancements in topologies, and control schemes to ensure safe and reliable operation. In literature, many problems like low voltage ride through (LVRT), fault ride through (FRT), efficiency improvement, DC grid integration, reactive power support to grid, etc., have been discussed. However, there has been no detailed discussion on the design and development of the hardware setup or test bench required to test all such topological and control schemes. In this paper, a detailed analysis and design details of all the components associated with the DFIG hardware setup have been discussed. The paper also discusses a novel application of a hysteresis current control scheme with user defined constant switching frequency operation which improves the overall controller performance. Experimental results are attached to illustrate the satisfactory working of the DFIG test bench.