Design of a Control System for Active and Reactive Power Control of a Small Grid‐Connected Wind Turbine

Abstract

Reactive power flow between a wind turbine system and the grid is an important issue especially when the wind turbine is connected to a remote grid. In this research, a control system has been developed that allows wind turbine to provide reactive power to the local load connected between the grid and the wind turbine. The supplied reactive power from the wind turbine is controlled by changing the phase angle of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) in the wind turbine inverter. A proportional controller is used to maintain the reactive power supplied by the wind turbine. Another PI controller is used to maintain the wind turbine operation at an optimum tip speed ratio (TSR) to extract maximum power from the wind. The proposed system along with all sub‐systems has been modelled and simulated in Matlab/ Simulink. The simulation results confirm that the designed system is able to control the wind turbine and capable of providing the required reactive power. Results show that the designed system is able to maintain the system power factor close to unity for a range of wind speeds.