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Modeling and Analysis of a Grid-Connected Wind Energy Conversion System Using PSCAD/EMTDC
Eung-Sang Kim, Member, IEEE, Byeong-Mun Song, Senior Member, IEEE, and Kwang Y. Lee, Fellow, IEEE
voltage of 690V, which is connected to the grid through a delta-wye transformer (690V/ 22.9kV). An internal load bank of 46kW is used for this system. Various modeling and performance analyses have been performed by integrating all of the component characteristics and by controlling active and reactive powers at the gridconnected power converter. The power converter model is developed with a current controller that is operating with a maximum power point tracker (MPPT) to extract power from the wind turbine generator [6]-[7]. The completed system is simulated, and its simulation model is validated for the system. II. SYSTEM MODELING AND CHARACTERISTICS A. Overall System Configuration Fig. 1 shows the overall system configuration of a gridconnected wind power generation system. The system consists of a wind turbine and synchronous generator, AC/DC and DC/AC power converters, internal load bank, grid-connected transformer, and the grid. The wind turbine is directly connected without a gear box to the rotor shaft of the synchronous generator, which is a ploy-phase synchronous type. While the wind turbine rotates, the exciter of the generator produces an output voltage and it is first converted into dc voltage through an AC/DC converter.
Wind Turbine PM Generator Wind AC/DC Converter

Abstract--This paper presents the modeling and analysis of a grid-connected wind energy conversion system (WECS) using PSCAD/EMTDC. The modeled system is characterized and analyzed for validation. An inverter control algorithm for effective power control is also proposed and evaluated, resulting in an efficient active power control that extracts the maximum power from the wind turbine. The controller also controls reactive power for load variation and aerodynamic models are applied for a wind turbine model. All analysis and evaluation have been conducted for a 1MW power system with 22.9kV. Index Terms--Wind power, grid-connected wind energy, power control algorithm, grid-connected inverter, inverter control, wind turbine modeling and analysis, PSCAD/EMTDC.

HERE are various types of wind power systems, some of which are connected to power system grid and some independent of the power grid. Many wind power sources have been installed in isolated islands and remote villages. However, since these wind power systems are highly dependent on the wind, it is necessary to link them with the power grid so that they can continuously provide electric power to customers, which is a big incentive for both customers and utility companies [1]-[2]. With recent improvement in power conversion technologies, the wind power resources can easily be connected to the power grid. In order to effectively transfer the acquired electric power to the grid, the power from the wind energy is required to maintain the quality of electricity, such as voltage, frequency, reliability, power factor, and so on, so that the risk can be minimized in electric power system operation and management [3]-[4]. For effective bi-directional power flow, the wind power system network should operate to maintain the power quality and reliability for the grid [5]. This paper presents the modeling and analysis of a gridconnected wind energy conversion system using PSCAD/ EMTDC. The proposed model is capable of extracting maximum power from the system with wind speeds changing in extremes and provides the ability to simulate bi-directional load flow, voltage fluctuation, and dynamic transient in the same test environment. Based on the proposed model, the described case study specifies that a wind generator having with the rated power of 1MW along with the rated ac output
E. S. Kim is with New & Renewable Energy System Research Center, KERI, 28-1, Seongju-Dong, Changwon, Korea (e-mail: eskim@keri.re.kr). B. M. Song and K. Y. Lee are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798 USA (e-mail: Ben_Song@baylor.edu; Kwang_Y_Lee@baylor.edu).

I. INTRODUCTION

DC Link DC/AC Inverter

AC Link

To Power Grid

Load

Fig. 1. Overall system configuration of a grid-connected wind power generation system.

The converter controls the produced power that has an arbitrary magnitude and frequency of the voltage and current of the synchronous generator driven by a wind turbine to get a certain dc source. The DC/AC inverter also controls dc source to feed the grid through the grid-connected transformer. B. Wind Turbine Modeling The modeling process will follow the necessary steps to design wind turbine blades. A number of parameters need to be coordinated with the generator designer to determine rpm and torque. The process begins by determining the extractable

978-1-4244-6266-7/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

power from the wind turbine operation. The power can be expressed by:
Pm = 1 C pR 2 v 3 2 (1)

where is the air density (kg/m3), v is the wind speed (m/s), and R is the blade radius (m). The power conversion efficiency Cp can be defined as the turbine power in proportion with wind power and is related to blade aerodynamic characteristics [2]. This efficiency is calculated as:
( 3) C p = (0.44 0.0167 ) sin 15 0.3 0.00184( 3) (2)

where is the pitch angle, and is the tip speed (rad/s). The power efficiency is a nonlinear expression which uses and as its variables. The tip speed is defined as:

E. Power Converters The AC-DC-AC power conversion system consists of an AC/DC power converter and a DC/AC voltage source inverter as shown in Fig. 1. The wind generator produces AC power at a variable frequency determined by its rotational speed. To connect it to the utility grid, the AC current should be first rectified to a DC current, and then fed to the AC bus through the inverter. Design of the inverter model is based on six IGBTs that use sinusoidal pulsed-width-modulation (SPWM) technology. The inverter output should be regulated to produce required active and reactive powers. The energy flowing from the wind sources to the grid must be controlled in order to track the maximum power point and to maintain a sinusoidal grid current with low harmonic distortion and a high power factor. III. PRECISION POWER CONTROL A. Active and Reactive Power Control For effective power control of a grid-connected DC/AC inverter, the inverter output current should be controlled by the power control setting points. Active power is set to the maximum power point to extract maximum power from the wind turbine. The reactive power also is set to account for the load variation. When the load of the power system is unexpectedly increased, the output voltage of the DC/AC inverter is decreased. In addition, by a sudden increase in wind speed the increased active power transferred to the grid may cause a voltage drop between the grid and the wind power system. The reactive power has to be provided in order to maintain a constant balance in the grid voltage. The reactive power is determined by the grid voltage and the maximum power capability of the wind power system is limited by the grid-connected inverter. Thus, the power control algorithm is developed for active and reactive power control. The model is also used to set active and reactive power reference limits to the DC/AC inverter. The active and reactive powers in synchronous reference frame can be expressed as follows [11]:
3 ( v d id + v q i q ) 2 3 Q = (v d iq v q id ) 2 P= ( 6)

r R
v

(3)

where r is the rotor speed (rad/s). The tip speed is proportional to the turbine rotor speed and inversely proportional to the wind speed. In this study, fixed pitch wind turbine is selected. The fixed pitch turbine is the one in which the turbine rotor blades are set at a fixed pitch angle. All blades are mounted directly onto the hub, so that its pitch could not be adjusted. In this case, would be zero degree at the fixed pitch angle. C. Wind Generator The synchronous generator (SG) is simulated with a d-q dynamic model and an IEEE SCRX exciter model using PSCAD/EMTDC [8]. In this model, the rotor for the SG consists of three windings. The field and the damper windings are aligned to the d-axis for transient and sub-transient characterizations, respectively. The other damper winding is aligned to the q-axis for sub-transient characterization [9][10]. This SG model is directly connected to the wind turbine model. The generator is rated at 1MW, and has 84 poles, resulting in a nominal speed of 26.82 rpm. The rated frequency of the generator is obtained as 18.77 (Hz) from
f = p n 2 60

(4)

where f is the rated frequency (Hz), p is the number of poles, and n is the rotor speed (rpm). D. Mechanical Shaft System The wind turbine shaft is directly connected to the rotor for a generator without a gear box. Like a mass-spring-damper representation, there may exist a sub-synchronous resonance. Thus, the dynamic of the mechanical shaft system can be expressed by: dr 1 JM = ( PM PG ) D (5) dt r where, JM is the inertia, r is the angular velocity of the rotor (rad/s), PM is the power from the turbine blades, PG is the power of the generator, and D is the shaft damping constant.

where vd and vq are the terminal voltages transformed to the dq reference frame and, similary, id and iq are for the output currents. The inverter control is based on the comparison of a converter voltage and the grid voltage. The controller is made of two decoupled controllers with two PI controllers to keep the power and voltage to the corresponding set-points. When the inverter is connected to the grid through a line impedance and the grid voltage is assumed constant, power transfer is mainly due to the inverter current variation, which are related to the variation of id and iq. Thus, by adjusting iq and id, active and reactive powers injected to the grid are controlled [12].

B. Controller Implementation Fig. 2 shows an overall control block diagram for the gridconnected inverter. The controller is designed with two control loops for active and reactive power controls [13]. These loops are combined with voltage and current controllers. The voltage controller is used to control the d-axis reference for active power. The current controller is used to regulate the output power of the wind power system. This current controller with a proportional-integral (PI) controller regulates the output current to follow its reference values. To control the active power, the inverter output power is measured and compared to the power reference. The power error feeds a PI controller having a current reference, iq_ref, as output. To have the d-axis current reference, id_ref, the inverter output voltage also is measured and compared to the voltage reference. In the same way, the error feeds to a PI current controller and is regulated for reactive power by the gridconnected inverter. The controller output power is controlled by the measured output power of the inverter and the reference active power.

where, K is the constant that is given by the wind turbine, is the air density, R is the blade radius, CPmax is the maximum power conversion factor, (= 0.44), which can be defined as the wind turbine power and the aerodynamic characteristics, is the tip speed ratio (=10.5), and r is the angular speed of rotor blade. All parameters such as , R, Cpmax, and , are assumed as constants, and then the power from the wind turbine is determined by the rotor blade speed. Fig. 3 shows the output power curves of the wind turbine under different wind speeds. The Pmmax is extracted from the variable wind turbine speeds. Thus, the active power reference, Pref, is selected by multiplying the maximum power, Pmmax, by the overall system efficiency, , from the wind turbine to the grid-connected inverter.

Fig. 3. Output power curves of the wind turbine under different wind speeds.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS To validate the proposed system model, various simulations have been performed in the wind power system. The considered system has a rated output power of 1MW and a rated output voltage of 690VAC. The inverter output terminals are connected to the 22.9kV grid through a 3-phase delta-wye transformer (690V/22.9kV) for power distribution. The external load of 470kW is connected to the output of the inverter. Fig. 4 shows the overall simulation configuration of the proposed system on PSCAD/EMTDC. The following test conditions are considered: i) Wind speed profile as shown in TABLE I is applied to the system simulation. All subsystem models will be evaluated and verified on how the power output is tracked well in the wind speed variation, and is simultaneously extracted at the maximum power based on the wind turbine rotor speed r and the power conversion factor Cp.
TABLE I WIND SPEED PROFILE Time (sec) Wind speed (m/s) 4 10.5 9 7 11 10 8.4 14 10.5

Fig. 2. Overall active and reactive power control architecture of the gridconnected inverter.

All PI controller gains are determined by the input error between the measured and the reference voltages. On the other hand, the current reference designed with a synchronous reference d-q axis frame is oriented to the d-axis rotating at the grid frequency. The measured three phase voltages are transformed to the synchronous rotating reference at the grid frequency. And the output of this PI controller is used to generate the current commands for the inverter switching. The d-q current command components, id_ref and iq_ref, are transferred to the a-b-c current command components, ia_ref, ib_ref and ic_ref_. Prior to selecting the current reference of the current controller, the active power reference Pref and the inverter output voltage reference Vref should be selected first. In the wind power system, since the inverter output voltage is supplied to the grid, Vref is set with the level of the grid voltage. Pref is also selected at the maximum power value from the wind system. The maximum power can be calculated as follows [6]:
max Pm =

C 1 R5 r3 = K r3 2

max p 3

(7)

ii) The modeled system is equipped with a three-phase external reactive load bank with 126kVar. The load bank will be turned on at t = 10 sec. By adding the reactive load, the output voltage of the inverter will be

investigated to make sure that the controller is working well under unexpected load variation. Fig. 5 shows the wind speed profile applied for the validation study. The corresponding active and reactive power waveforms are shown in Fig. 6. It is evident that the proposed controller is operating well to the sudden wind speed changes, such that the maximum power can be extracted. Fig. 7 shows the angular speed of wind turbine rotor blade and Fig. 8 shows the tip speed ratio profile at the given wind conditions. It shows that the controller controls well to extract the maximum power at the variable wind turbine speed. As the wind turbine speed changes, the tip speed ratio also changes. Thus, the maximum active power as shown in Fig. 9 is extracted at Cp = 0.44. As shown in Figs. 5 through 9, it is clear that the proposed controller achieves the maximum power generation that is closely related to the mechanical torque from the variable wind speed. Fig. 10 shows the output voltage waveforms of the inverter without the reactive power control. The voltage waveforms are captured during simulation for 20 seconds and these sinusoidal three-phase voltage waveforms are overlapped into one

screen. The output current is highly dependent on the wind speed, so the output voltage does not maintain constant voltage. Besides, when a reactive power load of 126kVar is connected to the inverter output terminal at t = 10 sec, the output voltage is slightly dropped. With the reactive power control, the inverter output voltage is stable at t = 10 sec even though the reactive power of 126kVar is applied to the load. This means that whenever the reactive power load is connected or loaded to the inverter terminals, the reactive power of the wind power is compensated to maintain a constant output voltage as shown in Fig. 11. Fig. 12 shows the sinusoidal output voltage waveforms of the grid-connected three-phase inverter during 50ms (from t = 16.34 to t = 16.39 sec). In the system simulation, the threephase output voltage is below a 5% voltage distortion factor and the current distortion factor is less than 3%. In order to minimize the voltage and current distortion, it will be necessary to add a filter to the inverter output terminals.

Fig. 4. Simulation model of the proposed wind power system using PSCAD/EMTDC.

Fig 5. Wind speed profile (m/s).

Fig. 6. Active and reactive power of the inverter output, Pinv & Qinv (pu).

Fig. 7. Angular speed of wind turbine rotor blade (rad/sec).

Fig. 12. Output voltage waveforms of the grid-connected inverter in zoom.

V. CONCLUSION This paper has proposed the modeling and analysis of a grid-connected wind energy conversion system using PSCAD/EMTDC. The modeled system including all subsystems is characterized and analyzed for validation. For effective active and reactive power controls, an inverter control algorithm is also proposed and evaluated. System simulation verifies the controller, resulting in an efficient active power control that extracts the maximum power from the wind turbine. As a result, the proposed system model and its control algorithm would be helpful in studying active and reactive power controls of the grid-connected inverter for variable wind speed operation. VI. REFERENCES
[1] [2] R. Mukund, Wind and Solar Power Systems, CRC Press, USA, 1999. A. Murdoch, R. S. Barton, J. R. Winkelman, and S. H. Javid, Control Design and Performance Analysis of a 6 MW wind Turbine Generator, IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, vol. 102, no. 5, pp.1340-1347, May 1983. [3] A. S. Neris, N. A. Vovos, and G. B. Giannakopoulos, A Variable Speed Wind Energy Conversion Scheme for Connection to Weak AC System, IEEE Transaction Energy Conversion, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 122-127, March 1999. [4] B. Singh, and G. K. Kasal, Voltage and Frequency Controller for a Three-Phase Four-Wire Autonomous Wind Energy Conversion System, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 509-518, June 2008. [5] Z. Chen, and E. Spooner, Grid Power Quality with Variable Speed Wind Turbines, IEEE Transaction Energy Conversion, vol. 16, no. 2, pp.148-154, June 2001. [6] M. B. Sharifian, Y. Mohamadrezapour, M. Hosseinpour, and S. Torabzade, Maximum Power Control of Grid Connected variable Speed Wind System through Back to Back Converters, Journal of Applied Sciences, vol. 8, pp. 4416-4421, 2008. [7] R. Datta and V. T. Ranganathan, A Method of Tracking the Peak Power Points for a Variable Speed Wind Energy Conversion System, IEEE Power Engineering Review, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 57, Oct. 2002. [8] Manitoba HVDC Research Centre, PSCAD/EMTDC User's Manual Guide, Version 4, 2004. [9] F. Blaabjerg, R. Teodorescu, M. Liserre, and A. V. Timbus, Overview of Control and Grid Synchronization for Distributed Power Generation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1398-1409, Oct. 2006. [10] F. M. Hughes, O. Anaya-Lara, N. Jenkins, and G. Strbac, Control of DFIG-Based Wind Generation for Power Network Support, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 20, no.4, pp. 1958-1966, Nov. 2005. [11] J. G. Slootweg, S. W. H. de Haan, H. Polinder, W. L. Kling, General Model for Representing Variable Speed Wind Turbines in Power System Dynamics Simulations, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 18, no.1, pp. 516-524, Feb. 2003. [12] F. D. Kanellos and N. D. Hatziagyriou, The effect of Variable Speed Wind Turbines on the Operation of Weak Distribution Networks, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 543-548, Dec. 2002.

Fig. 8. Tip speed ratio profile, .

Fig. 9. Power conversion factor profile, Cp.

Fig. 10. Three-phase output voltage waveforms of the inverter without the reactive power control.

Fig. 11. Three-phase output voltage waveforms of the inverter with the reactive power control.

6 [13] F. Valenciaga, and P. F. Puleston, Variable Structure Control of a Wind Energy Conversion System Based on a Brushless Doubly Fed Reluctance Generator, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 499-506, June 2007. [14] Z. Chen, J. M. Guerrero, and F. Blaabjerg, A Review of the State of the Art of Power Electronics for Wind Turbines, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 24, no. 8, pp. 1859-1875, Aug. 2009.

VII. BIOGRAPHIES
Eung-Sang Kim (M00) received the B.S. degree from Seoul Industrial University, Korea, in 1988 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Soongsil University, Korea, in 1991 and 1997, respectively. Since 1991, he has been with the Department of Power Distribution System at the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI), Korea, where he is currently a Principal Researcher and serves as a member of Smart Grid Project Planning committee in Korea. His interests are new and renewable energy system designs and developments of wind power, photovoltaic and fuel cell energy conversion systems. Byeong-Mun Song (M90, SM02) received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Chungnam National University, Korea, in 1986 and 1988, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg in 2001. He was with the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute and General Atomics. In 2004, he established his own venture company, ActsPower Technologies, San Diego, CA and served as the CEO/President and CTO. In August 2009, Dr. Song joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. His interests are in the design, analysis, simulation and implementation of high performance power converters, motor drives, and power electronics systems. Dr. Song is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Kwang Y. Lee (F01) received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, in 1964, M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from North Dakota State University, Fargo, in 1968, and Ph.D. degree in System Science from Michigan State University, East Lansing, in 1971. He has been with Michigan State, Oregon State, Univ. of Houston, the Pennsylvania State University, and Baylor University, where he is now Professor and Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His interests include power systems control, operation, planning, and intelligent system applications to power systems. Dr. Lee is also a Fellow of IEEE and Editor of IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion.