IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER 2004

1323

Flexible Control of Small Wind Turbines With Grid Failure Detection Operating in Stand-Alone and Grid-Connected Mode
Remus Teodorescu, Senior Member, IEEE, and Frede Blaabjerg, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents the development and test of a flexible control strategy for an 11-kW wind turbine with a back-to-back power converter capable of working in both stand-alone and grid-connection mode. The stand-alone control is featured with a complex output voltage controller capable of handling nonlinear load and excess or deficit of generated power. Grid-connection mode with current control is also enabled for the case of isolated local grid involving other dispersed power generators such as other wind turbines or diesel generators. A novel automatic mode switch method based on a phase-locked loop controller is developed in order to detect the grid failure or recovery and switch the operation mode accordingly. A flexible digital signal processor (DSP) system that allows user-friendly code development and online tuning is used to implement and test the different control strategies. The back-to-back power conversion configuration is chosen where the generator converter uses a built-in standard flux vector control to control the speed of the turbine shaft while the grid-side converter uses a standard pulse-width modulation active rectifier control strategy implemented in a DSP controller. The design of the longitudinal conversion loss filter and of the involved PI-controllers are described in detail. Test results show the proposed methods works properly. Index TermsDigital signal processor (DSP) control, grid failure, grid monitoring, phase-locked loop (PLL), renewable energy, wind turbine.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE USE OF squirrel-cage induction generators (SCIG) for direct grid-connection wind energy conversion systems (WEC) is well established. With the last advances in power electronics, the use of variable-speed SCIG with a double stage acdcac power conversion has become quite attractive [1], in both low power and very high power levels [1]. Increased energy production at low wind, elimination of the excitation capacitor bank, and especially the possibility for stand-alone operation mode can thus be achieved at the expense of a back-to-back converter with a flexible control [2]. Small efficient wind turbines (WT) in the range of 11 kW as depicted in Fig. 1 can be used to supply private houses or farms in remote locations in developing countries where low-cost access to the electrical power grid is impractical. The trend is that

they should be able to work in stand-alone mode but also connected to isolated local loads/grid in parallel with other generators such as other wind turbines, photovoltaic generators, or diesel generators in the so called hybrid generator systems (HGS). Thus some new challenges on the control side of these WT occurred like reasonable voltage regulation in stand-alone mode with nonlinear load, grid-connection mode enabled, and automatic detection of grid failure. But in order to achieve these goals, relative complex control strategies need to be developed. Also grid failure detection and an automatic mode switching are required. A seamless transfer method from grid-connected to standalone and vice versa for critical loads is described in [3] where an extra static switch is required. The algorithm matches the magnitude and phase of the inverter voltage and the grid voltage at the time of disconnecting or reconnecting to the grid to minimize any sudden voltage change across the load. A phase-locked loop (PLL) technique is commonly used in grid-connected converters mainly for grid-synchronization [5], [6]. In this paper, a novel PLL-based method for grid failure detection and automatic mode switching is proposed where the phase difference between the grid and the inverter is used to determine grid failure and restoring. The flexible control strategy featuring stand-alone mode and grid-connected control as well as the automatic mode switching strategy has been developed, implemented and tested for a 11-kW WT. The control strategy has been implemented on a development platform based on a dSPACE digital signal processor (DSP) controller [4] that allows flexible code development in Simulink and online tuning and monitoring. Thus a relative short development time is achieved. Both operation modes as well as the involved current and voltage controllers design are described in detail. Also, the design of the longitudinal conversion loss (LCL) filter together with experimental results obtained with a drive-train emulating the 11-kW wind turbine are presented. II. CONCEPTS FOR STAND-ALONE WIND TURBINES The most common configurations of power converters for stand-alone SCIG WT are depicted in Fig. 2. The diode rectifier topology in Fig. 2(a) can only be used in one quadrant, it is simple and it is not possible to control it. This configuration is especially suitable for fixed-speed wind turbines and requires a capacitor bank between the generator and the diode rectifier in order to magnetize the induction generator. The back-to-back voltage source converter is a bidirectional power converter consisting of two conventional voltage source

Manuscript received June 1, 2004; revised July 21, 2004. This work was supported by the Danish Research Agency, Danish Technical Research Council through the Project Reliable Grid Condition Detection 2058030003. Recommended by Associate Editor F. Z. Peng. The authors are with the Institute of Energy Technology, Power Electronics Systems Section, Aalborg University, Aalborg 9220, Denmark (e-mail: ret@iet.aau.dk; fbl@iet.aau.dk). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2004.833452

0885-8993/04$20.00 2004 IEEE

1324

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2004

can be obtained by properly connecting the output terminals of the converter to the input terminals. Some advantages of the matrix converters are less thermal stress of the semiconductors for a low output frequency compared with the back-to-back solution and the absence of the dc-link capacitor that may increase the efficiency and the lifetime. As drawbacks can be mentioned: the intrinsic limitation of the output voltage, the unavailability of a true bi-directional switch and there is no decoupling between the input and the output of the converter as for the case of back-to-back converter and this may lead to some instability issues. A comparative study regarding different power converter technologies that can be used in wind turbine applications [9] concluded that the back-to-back converter is the least troublesome configuration mainly because it can use commercial converters at the generator side. III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION The power configuration of the developed system is depicted in Fig. 3. It consists in a three-phase squirrel-cage induction generator, a generator converter to control the speed of the shaft, a dc-link with breaking chopper, a full-bridge grid converter with LCL filter, in-rush resistors, and the three-phase 400-V/50-Hz grid. A flexible test and development platform has been built using a variable-speed drive to emulate the wind turbine mechanical characteristics. The control diagram of this platform is shown in Fig. 4 where the control of the wind turbine emulator is also shown. Three commercial frequency inverters rated for 18.5 kVA/400 V are used. The first one of the type Danfoss VLT5022 is feeding a 15-kW induction motor in order to emulate the wind turbine shaft and uses a standard scalar open-loop torque control. The second converter of type Danfoss VLT5022 Flux is used as generator converter and uses the built-in standard vector flux control to regulate the speed of the generator and provide the magnetizing flux for the induction generator. The last one is using only the power stage of a Danfoss VLT 5022 inverter and is controlled by the dSPACE controller. It is used as grid converter and is connected to the grid through an LCL filter and employs a -axis control strategy for controlling the active and reactive power independently. In-rush resistors are used to limit the dc-link capacitors charging current at startup (see Fig. 3). Both grid-connected and stand-alone mode for the grid converter have been implemented using the dSPACE controller. A mode switch can switch between the two operation modes automatically depending on the presence of the grid, as it is shown in VII. A. Wind Turbine Emulator The wind speed is calculated as an average value of the fixed-point wind speed over the whole rotor, and it takes the tower shadow and the rotational turbulences into account. The wind turbine mechanical shaft is emulated using a standard six-pole 15-kW/400-V squirrel-cage induction motor controlled by a commercial frequency inverter operated in open-loop torque control mode. The aerodynamic model of the curve as shown in Fig. 5. wind turbine rotor is based the

Fig. 1. Small 11-kW GAIA (Denmark) wind turbine for households and remote location.

Fig. 2. Stand-alone wind turbine configurations with squirrel-cage induction generators: (a) diode bridge rectifier and voltage source inverter, (b) back-to-back voltage source converter, and (c) matrix converter.

inverters as shown in Fig. 2(b). To achieve full control of the output, the dc-link voltage must be boosted to a level higher than the amplitude of the isolated grid voltage. The power flow of the grid side converter is controlled in order to keep the dc-link voltage constant, while the control of the generator side is set to suit the magnetization demand and the reference speed or torque. A technical advantage of this topology is the capacitor decoupling between the grid converter and the generator converter. Besides affording some protection, this decoupling offers separate control of the two converters, allowing compensation of asymmetry both on the generator side and on the grid side, independently. Though, the dc-link capacitor is bulky and exhibits relative reduced lifetime. The matrix converter solution as shown in Fig. 2(c) should be an all silicon solution with no passive components in the power circuit [7], [8]. The basic idea of this converter is that the desired input current, output voltage and output frequency

TEODORESCU AND BLAABJERG: FLEXIBLE CONTROL OF WIND TURBINES WITH GRID FAILURE DETECTION

1325

Fig. 3.

Power configuration of the 11-kW variable-speed wind generator.

Fig. 5. C coefficient.

0  performance curve for the wind turbine. C

is the torque

The wind turbine emulator uses a scalar open-loop torque controlled induction motor where the torque reference is chosen to be (3)
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the flexible development platform for the wind turbine with 11-kW generator.

in order to extract the maximum power from the wind turbine at a given wind speed. B. Generator Control

The tip speed ratio

is calculated as (1)

where is the shaft speed, is the blade radius, and is the wind speed. curve is very useful in modeling the torque proThe duction of the wind turbine at different wind speeds. Choosing , maxthe optimal for the maximum torque coefficient imum power can be extracted by setting the reference speed and torque for the turbine emulator [1]

The generator control is working in closed-loop speed control mode where the speed reference converter is chosen to be equal with the optimal speed in order to extract the maximum power from the wind turbine at a certain wind speed (4) C. Grid Converter Control The wind turbine grid converter can operate in both grid-connected control mode and stand-alone control mode. Grid-Connected Control Mode: In grid-connected control mode, basically all the available power that can be extracted from the wind turbine is transferred to the grid. Additionally, reactive power compensation is possible if required. The control structure for grid-connected control mode [10] is shown in Fig. 6. Standard PI-controllers are used to regulate the grid -synchronous frame in the inner control currents in the

(2) where is the optimal for the maximum torque coefficient as depicted in Fig. 5, and is the the air density.

1326

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2004

loops and the dc-voltage in the outer loop. A decoupling of the cross-coupling is implemented in order to compensate the couplings due to the output filter [10], [11]. The reference current in the -axis of the current loop is typically set to zero in order to achieve zero phase angle between voltage and current and so unity power factor can be achieved. The output of the current controllers sets the voltage reference for a standard space vector modulation (SVM) that controls the switches of the grid converter via a fiber optic link. Synchronism with grid is achieved by using a phase-locked loop (PLL) as described in [5] and [6]. The principle of the PLL is depicted in Fig. 7. The input signals are

Fig. 6. Control structure for grid-connected control mode of operation.

(5)

and are the grid voltage where is the grid phase angle, components in stationary -reference frame. The philosophy of the PLL is that the sinus of the difference between grid phase angle and the inverter phase angle can be reduced to zero using a PI-controller, and thus locking the grid inverter phase to the grid, knowing that for small arguments (6) The output of the PI controller is the inverter output frequency that is integrated to obtain the inverter phase . In order to improve the dynamic response at startup, the nominal frequency of is feed-forwarded to the output of the PI-controller. the grid In Section VII, it will be described how the can be used for detecting the presence or disappearance of the grid in order to automatically switch between grid-connected and stand-alone control mode. Stand-Alone Control Mode: In stand-alone control mode, no grid exists so the output voltages need to be controlled in terms of amplitude and frequency and thus, the reactive and, respectively, active power flow is controlled [1]. In the case of unbalance between the generated and the load-required power, adjustment of the speed of the generator can regulate the produced power in a limited range. The potential excess of power will be quickly dissipated in the damp resistor by starting the chopper control (see Fig. 4). The control structure for stand-alone control mode is depicted in Fig. 8 and it consists of output voltage controller, dc-link voltage controller, damping chopper control, and current limiter. The output voltage controller is aiming to control the output voltage with a minimal influence from the shape of the nonlinear load currents or load transients. A standard PI controller operating in the synchronously rotating coordinate system where is kept to zero is used. The dc-voltage PI controller maintains the dc voltage to the reference. The dc-link voltage controller is acting only when the dc-link is below the reference and it lowers the voltage reference of the

Fig. 7. PLL structure used to synchronize the inverter voltage with the grid.

Fig. 8.

Control structure for stand-alone mode of operation.

main voltage controller in order to avoid inverter saturation. For fast response there is a direct forward connection to the voltage controller output. When the dc-link is higher than the reference, the damping chopper control is activated and discharges the energy in excess stored in the dc-link and thus reduces the dc-link voltage. The control is linear and increases the duty-cycle as a function of the overvoltage size. In the case of an over-production, the level of produced power can be reduced also by changing the shaft speed in the allowed speed range. When the load current exceeds the rated current, the current limiter will decrease the output voltage reference in the allowed range, and for fast response there is a direct forward connection to the voltage controller output. This situation can occur if at a certain load, the generated power decreases due to lower wind or during overloading.

TEODORESCU AND BLAABJERG: FLEXIBLE CONTROL OF WIND TURBINES WITH GRID FAILURE DETECTION

1327

D. Control Panel The whole control strategy of the wind turbine emulator and wind turbine control is implemented in Simulink [12] using a DS1103 dSPACE controller. A virtual control panel developed in ControlDesk [12] that controls the whole system is shown in Fig. 9. As it can be observed, the control layout is divided into two parts generator control and grid converter control. In the generator control panel, the reference for the generator speed and the mechanical power can be set. The speed and torque are shown in both graphs and digital displays. In the grid-converter control panel the control mode will be automatically switched between stand-alone and grid-connected according to the presence of the grid (see Section VII). In grid connection control mode, the references for the active and reactive power to be transferred to the grid are given. The dc-voltage reference can also be changed in the allowable range. In stand-alone control mode, the output voltage reference is set in terms of RMS value. The dc voltage reference can also be changed in the allowable range. Grid currents and voltages are displayed in scope-like graphs. Digital displays show the power balance, including the dissipated power in the dc chopper, as well as the output voltages and currents. A test control panel for online tuning of the controllers has also been done. It proved to be a very convenient method to fine-tune the PI-controllers in the whole system. In the following more details on the design of the LCL-filter, controllers in the two control modes and the Automatic Mode Switching will be explained. IV. LCL FILTER DESIGN The LCL filter gives a better attenuation of the switching ripple compared to a classic L filter as it is a third-order filter and therefore it can be designed using smaller components. The transfer function in the -plane of a single-phase LCLfilter (see Fig. 3) with passive damping is shown in (7) at the is the inverter voltage, is the bottom of the page, where is the inverter-side inductance, is the inverter current, is the filter capacitance, and are grid-side inductance, the damping series resistors. The following design considerations are taken into account [10]: 1) the capacitor value is limited by the tolerable decrease of the power factor at rated power (less than 5%). The total value of the inductance should be lower than 10% to limit the dc-link voltage; 2) the voltage drop across the filter during operation in order to limit the dc-link voltage; 3) the resonance frequency should be included in a range between ten times the line frequency and one half of the switching frequency in order not to create resonance problems in the lower and higher parts of the harmonic

Fig. 9. ControlDesk panel for testing the wind turbine control strategy both stand alone and grid-connected control modes.

spectrum. The passive resistors should be chosen as a compromise between the necessary damping and the losses in the system. The following values for the LCL-filter have been calculated: mH, mH, F, and . V. GRID CONNECTION CONTROL MODECURRENT CONTROLLER DESIGN In order to design the PI current controllers in the syn-frame, the transfer function of the filter, conchronous sidered as the system plant, is discretized using a zero-order hold method at a sampling frequency of 8 kHz and it thereby becomes (8) An additional delay of one switching period is inserted in the model due to the PWM control of the inverter. Then the transfer function of the PI-controller is (9) The block diagram of the current control loop is first simulated in Simulink using the model from Fig. 10 where one sample delay due to the effect of PWM inverter is included. A standard criterion to achieve an acceptable step response is used for tuning the PI controller [11]. Fig. 11(a) shows pole-zero plot of open loop system without the controller. There are two complex conjugated poles and one real pole. Because of complex conjugated poles, compensation techniques cannot be used. Instead a pole-zero placement techms is selected nique is used. An integrator time constant as a compromise between good dynamics and still a good noise

(7)

1328

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2004

Fig. 10. turbine.

Simulink model of current control loop in z-domain for the wind

Fig. 11. Pole-zero placement of (a) open-loop system and (b) closed loop system for the current controllers in grid-connected control mode.

rejection. The gain is selected using root locus method so that the dominant poles have a damping of 0.7. In Fig. 11(b), the pole-zero placement for optimized closed loop of the control is shown. The dominant poles have now a damping of 0.7 at a frequency of 580 Hz. The gain of the controller is found to be . VI. STAND-ALONE CONTROL MODEVOLTAGE CONTROLLER DESIGN The output voltage controller is aiming to control the output voltage with minimal influence of the shape of the nonlinear load currents or load transients. The transfer function of the grid in terms of grid voltage and inwith a load impedance is representing the plant and can be expressed verter voltage in the -domain as (10) shown at the bottom of the page, where is the grid impedance at nominal power. Synthesis of the voltage regulator is again made in the -plane, using a Simulink equivalent model, where the grid transfer function has been converted into the -plane using zero-order-hold method [12]. The switching frequency is chosen to be 8 kHz. The pole-zero placement of the plant shown in Fig. 12(a) show, that there is a real pole that can be compensated by setting the integral time of PI-controller to ms. Using the root locus method [12] depicted can be chosen to achieve in Fig. 12(b), a gain of . From the compensated a damping of the loop of Bode-plot shown in Fig. 12(c), the bandwidth of the voltage controller can be determined as the minimum frequency for Hz. 3-dB attenuation or 45 phase [12] as

Fig. 12. Design of the voltage controller in stand-alone control mode: (a) pole-zero map for the plant, (b) root-locus map for closed-loop system, and (c) Bode-plot of the closed loop system.

The controller is now tested at very light load conditions (1% of nominal load) and a low damping at the resonance frequency of the LCL-filter was noticed as shown in Fig. 13(a). The response of the system depicted in Fig. 13(b) shows high oscillations due to a high gain. Redesigning the controller for light load using the same tech. The nique (root locus) leads to a lower gain of Bode-plot shown in Fig. 14(a) shows much better attenuation at the switching and sampling frequency of 8 kHz and the step response depicted in Fig. 14(b) was considered acceptable in terms of compromise between the speed and damping of the higher order harmonics at low load conditions. From the compensated Bode-plot shown in Fig. 14(a), the bandwidth of the voltage controller can be obtained as Hz. The final parameters for the main output voltage con, ms. troller are VII. AUTOMATIC MODE SWITCHING Switching between stand-alone and grid-connection operation modes is done using the difference between the measured grid voltage angle and the angle generated by the phaselocked loop (PLL) [5] as control variable (see Fig. 7). When (see Fig. 15) is exceeding a certain this phase error level grid failure is considered and the operation mode is consequently switched.

(10)

TEODORESCU AND BLAABJERG: FLEXIBLE CONTROL OF WIND TURBINES WITH GRID FAILURE DETECTION

1329

Fig. 13.

Voltage controller characteristics at 1% load in stand-alone control mode with K = 0:32: (a) Bode plot and (b) step response.

Fig. 14.

Voltage controller characteristics at 1% load in stand-alone control mode with K = 0:1: (a) Bode-plot and (b) step response.

Fig. 15.

Phase angle detection with PLL in xy -coordinate system.

In grid-connection mode the system is using the PLL-generated phase angle that is less noise sensitive than the phase angle directly calculated from the voltage -components using arctan function [11]. Fig. 7 depicts the PLL loop principle. A settling time of 20 ms was considered in order to get a satisfied high bandwidth of

is the PLL controller. When the grid fails, the phase error starting to increase and when it exceeds a certain threshold the system switches to stand-alone mode. In stand-alone mode the PLL is disabled and the reference frequency is integrated to generate the angle (see. Fig. 8). The grid-connection to stand-alone transition is demonstrated experimentally in Fig. 16 at nominal load of 11 kW. The threshold for the phase error was set to 0.3 radians. Thus an efficient way to detect the grid failure is achieved, and as it can be observed, in this case the system continues to operate in stand-alone mode. In stand-alone operation the system uses its own generated voltage phase angle, which is normally different from grid phase voltage angle. When the grid is recovered, due to the fact that the two voltage systems are not synchronized, a high voltage across the LCL filter would cause high currents to flow through the inverter. The high currents will trip the inverter and the presence of the grid is investigated by measurements. If the grid is recovered, the coasted inverter waits for the PLL to perform synchronization. The system is then considered

1330

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2004

Fig. 16. Measured grid-connection to stand-alone transition: (a) phase error (etheta) and synchronization signal (PLLe), (b) phase currents, and (c) phase voltages;.

1

Fig. 17. Measured stand-alone to grid-connection transition: (a) phase error (etheta) and synchronization signal (PLLe), (b) phase currents, and (c) phase voltages.

1

synchronized again when the phase error falls below the threshold and now the inverter is started in grid-connection mode, as it can be seen in Fig. 17 where the threshold was set again to 0.3 radians. A state-machine has been built and implemented in order to handle the transition between the three states: idle (I), standalone (SA), and grid-connected (GC) as depicted in Fig. 18, where and represent the presence and, respectively, nonpresence of the grid voltage condition, PLLe represents the , TRIP and /TRIP stands for trip condition signal enabled, and, respectively, not-enabled and START and

STOP stands for the running mode, and, respectively, coasting mode (idling). The advantage of this method is that it does not require extra hardware for mode switching as described in [3]. The shortcoming of this method is that the PLL controller has to be fast enough in order to limit the current rise below the permitted limit during the detection period. VIII. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The hardware realization of the back-to-back converter is shown in Fig. 19. As it can be observed, the system has been housed in a mobile cabinet in order to ease the field-testing.

TEODORESCU AND BLAABJERG: FLEXIBLE CONTROL OF WIND TURBINES WITH GRID FAILURE DETECTION

1331

I-GC = V and /PLLe and /TRIP and START I-SA = /V and /TRIP and START GC-I = TRIP or STOP SA-I = TRIP or STOP or PLLe GC-SA = PLLe
Fig. 18. State-machine for controlling the automatic mode switch. Fig. 20. Experimental test of grid-connection control mode. Current response at 10-A step in d-axis reference. Grid phase voltage V [250 V/div], dc-voltage V [250 V/div] and grid current I [5 A/div].

Fig. 21. Experimental test with linear load in stand-alone mode. Grid line-line [250 V/div], dc-voltage V [250 V/div], and grid current I voltage V [10 A/div]. Fig. 19. Back-to-back converter mobile cabinet build for the 11-kW wind turbine test setup with dSPACE DS1103controller.

First the system is tested in grid-connection mode at a 10-A step in the -current reference. The system response depicted in Fig. 20 and demonstrates good performance of the current controller. The presence of the low-order harmonics in the current can be observed as a consequence of the grid voltage background harmonic distortion. The system is then tested in stand-alone mode generating the nominal power of 11 kW having a linear balanced resistive load. The dc-voltage was set to 620 V, and the output phase voltage was set to 230 V. The experimental results are shown in Fig. 21 and reveal lower harmonic distortion. The phase shift of 30 between the measured voltage and current is due to the fact that the measured voltage is line-to-line voltage. The wind turbine is tested in stand-alone mode generating the nominal power of 11 kW having a nonlinear load created with a three-phase diode rectifier with resistive load (Fig. 22).

Fig. 22. Experimental test with an 11-kW nonlinear load: (a) grid phase voltage V and (b) grid current I .

The dc-voltage was set to 700 V, and the output phase voltage was set to 230 V. The measured voltage THD was 9.8% at a current THD of 34.7% indicating a reasonable voltage regulation. The regulation can be improved by using other controller structures like resonant controllers which are more suitable for sinus tracking [11]. The switching ripple in the waveforms from Fig. 22 is removed as they are sampled once in the middle of

1332

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2004

the switching period using the dSPACE controller. The THD is measured with a Voltech PM3000 power analyzer directly. IX. CONCLUSION This paper presents the development and test of a flexible control system for an 11-kW wind turbine system with a double back-to-back power converter capable of working in stand-alone mode but also in grid-connection mode on a local grid. A novel strategy for automatic switching between the two operating modes based on PLL controller is presented and successfully tested. The most relevant feature of the system is the flexibility, ability to develop the control strategy entirely in Simulink and test it in a short time. The test results show high-performance features which can be used in future wind turbine systems. REFERENCES
[1] F. Blaabjerg, Z. Chen, and S. B. Kjaer, Power electronics as efficient interface in dispersed power generation systems, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, pp. ????????????, Sept. 2004. [2] R. Pena, R. Cardenas, R. Blasco, G. Asher, and J. Clare, A cage induction generator using back-to-back PWM converters for variable speed grid connected wind energy system, in Proc. IECON01 Conf., vol. 2, 2001, pp. 13761381. [3] R. Tirumala and N. Mohan, Seamless transfer of a grid-connected PWM inverters between utility-interactive and stand-alone modes, in Proc. APEC02 Conf., vol. 2, 2002, pp. 10811086. [4] R. Otterbach, T. Pohlmann, A. Rukgauer, and J. Vater, DS1103 PPC controller boardrapid prototyping with combined RISC and DSP power for motion control, in Proc. PCIM98 Conf., Nrnberg, Germany, 1998. [5] G.-C. Hsich and J. Hung, Phase-locked loop techniquesA survey, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 43, pp. 609615, Dec. 1996. [6] S.-K. Chung, Phase-locked loop for grid-connected three-phase power conversion systems, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 147, no. 3, pp. 213219, May 2000. [7] P. Nielsen, F. Blaabjerg, and J. K. Pedersen, New protection issues of a matrix converter design considerations for adjustable speed drives, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 35, pp. 11501161, Sept./Oct. 1998. [8] J. Chang, T. Sun, and A. Wang, Highly compact AC-AC converter achieving a high voltage transfer rate, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 49, pp. 345352, Apr. 2002. [9] L. H. Hansen, L. Helle, F. Blaabjerg, E. Ritchie, S. Munk-Nielsen, H. Bindner, P. Soerensen, and B. Bak-Jensen, Conceptual survey of generators and power electronics for wind turbines, Tech. Rep. Ris-R1205(EN), 2001. [10] M. Liserre, A. DellAquila, and F. Blaabjerg, Design and control of a three-phase rectifier under nonideal operating conditions, in Proc. IAS02 Conf., vol. 2, 2002, pp. 11811188. [11] M. P. Kazmierkowski, R. Krishnan, and F. Blaabjerg, Control in Power Electronics. Selected Problems. New York: Academic, 2002.

[12] A. Tewari, Modern Control Design With Matlab and Simulink. York: Wiley, 2002.

New

Remus Teodorescu (S94M99SM02) received the Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnical University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in power electronics from Galati University, Romania, in 1994. From 1989 to 1990, he was with the Iron and Steel Plant, Galati, and then was with Galati University, where he was an Assistant with the Electrical Engineering Department, and since 1994, an Assistant Professor. In 1996, he was appointed head of the Power Electronics Research Group (PERG), Galati University. In 1998, he joined the Institute of Energy Technology, Power Electronics and Drives Department, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He has more then 60 papers published, one book, and two patents. His areas of interests include power converters for renewable energy systems, multi-level inverters, digital control and computer simulations of advanced electrical drives. Dr. Teodorescu received the Technical Committee Prize Paper Awards, and the IEEE-IAS98 and OPTIM-ABB Prize Paper Awards at OPTIM02.

Frede Blaabjerg (S86M88SM97F03) received the M.Sc.EE. and Ph.D. degrees from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 1987 and 1995, respectively. He was with ABB-Scandia, Randers, Denmark, from 1987 to 1988. He became an Assistant Professor at Aalborg University in 1992, an Associate Professor in 1996, and a Full Professor in power electronics and drives in 1998. He is the author or coauthor of more than 300 publications in his research fields including Control in Power Electronics (New York: Academic, 2002). He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Power Electronics and the Danish journal Elteknik. His research areas are in power electronics, static power converters, ac drives, switched reluctance drives, modeling, characterization of power semiconductor devices and simulation, wind turbines, and green power inverters. Dr. Blaabjerg received the 1995 Angelos Award for his contribution in modulation technique and control of electric drives, the Annual Teacher Prize at Aalborg University in 1995, the Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award from the IEEE Power Electronics Society in 1998, four IEEE Prize paper awards during the last six years, the C. Y. OConnor Fellowship from Perth, Australia in 2002, the Statoil-Prize in 2003 for his contributions in power electronics, and the Grundfos-prize in 2004 for his contributions in power electronics and drives. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS. He has held a number of chairman positions in research policy and research funding bodies in Denmark.