428 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 26, NO.

2, JUNE 2011

Control and Interfacing of a Grid-Connected

Small-Scale Wind Turbine Generator
Haining Wang, Chem Nayar, Senior Member, IEEE, Jianhui Su, and Ming Ding

AbstractAn ac/dc/ac power converter is an important device I. INTRODUCTION

used to extract power from variable speed permanent magnet wind
MALL-SCALE wind turbines interfaced to an ac grid via
generators and feed it into the grid. This paper describes how these
converters incorporate maximum power point tracking based on
its power feed to the grid at different wind speeds. Using the perma-
S grid-connected inverters have wide-spread applications in
household and community level power generation. The advan-
nent magnet generator voltage, grid current, and grid voltage sam- tages of this arrangement are that it eliminates the need for bat-
ples, the proposed system achieves an enhanced dynamic behavior.
teries, as all the generated power can be fed to the power grid.
This feature effectively prevents the grid from boost charging
the dc side of the H-bridge inverter at the start of operation. Since Major issues with existing grid-connected inverter systems for
small wind turbines normally do not have expensive pitch control small wind turbines are as follows.
mechanisms, a thyristor-based dump-load circuit is employed 1) Limited speed range: Limitations with existing grid-
to protect the turbine from high wind speed operation when dis- connected inverters have limited dc voltage window,which
connected from the grid. The thyristor controller also protects the
inverter from high dc voltage input from the wind generator at
limits power extraction in both low and high wind speed
high wind speed. Preliminary results are included using a labora- regimes.
tory 2-kW prototype converter. 2) High cost: Existing grid-connected inverters adapted from
the more common photovoltaic inverters require addi-
Index TermsDump-load, grid-connected, maximum power
point, voltage compensation, wind generation. tional front end ac/dc conversion and voltage limiting
power electronic circuitry and control algorithms. Hu
et al. [1] and Tan et al. [2] put forward block diagrams of
NOMENCLATURE a grid-connected wind turbine with a permanent magnet
ug Grid voltage. synchronous generator that uses a back-to-back full-scale
iac Grid-connected current. pulse width modulation (PWM) converter connected to
Ure Input voltage of the boost circuit. the grid. [3] This increases the system cost and has pre-
Udc Output voltage of the boost circuit. vented the more widespread use of small grid-connected
un Output voltage of the H-bridge. wind turbines.
Ip Active component of the grid-connected current. Considering the usage of permanent magnet (PM) syn-
Synchronous angular frequency. chronous generators, three-phase diode rectifiers followed with
L Line inductance. dcdc choppers are more economical than three-phase insulated
R0 Equivalent resistance of L- and H-bridge. gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) converters. In [4][6], a simple
Kw Gain of the main circuit. acdcac converter for grid-connected wind power generation
Td Switch open delay time. systems is used with advantages that include inexpensive cost
PM Permanent magnet. and easy control of the generator load.
MPPT Maximum power point tracking. In this paper, a power conversion circuit such as in [3] is de-
CCVSI Current control voltage source inverter. signed for a small-scale grid-connected wind generator system;
in addition, a thyristor-based dump-load circuit is employed
Superscripts as shown in Fig. 1.
* Reference value. The system consists of a permanent magnet wind turbine
Manuscript received November 10, 2009; revised April 27, 2010 and generator, a dump-load control circuit, a diode rectifier, a
October 25, 2010; accepted January 24, 2011. Date of publication April 11, boost dc/dc converter, and a grid-connected inverter. The output
2011; date of current version May 18, 2011. This work was supported in part by voltage of a PM generator is rectified to provide a dc voltage
the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 50777015 and
in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under that will vary in magnitude to reflect the turbine speed. The
grant 2010HGZY0015. The work of H. Wang was supported by the HFUT and boost converter makes it possible for inverters operating at low
ARC for her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, wind speed. Macready and Coates [5] adopt a dynamic breaking
WA, Australia. Paper no. TEC-00475-2009.
H. Wang, J. Su, and M. Ding are with the School of Electrical Engineering switch to provide the regulated dc bus voltage; this paper uses
and Automation, Hefei University of Technology, Heifei, Anhui 230009, China an independent dump-load circuit made up of SCR, which not
(e-mail: ahwhn@126.com). only protects the inverter from high dc voltage in grid-connected
C. Nayar is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University
of Technology, Perth, WA 6845, Australia (e-mail: c.v.nayar@exchange.curtin. mode under high wind speed conditions, but also protects the
edu.au). wind turbine from overspeeding when the grid connection is lost.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online When compared to similar existing systems, the proposed cir-
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEC.2011.2116792 cuit has advantages such as low cost, can control dump-load

0885-8969/$26.00 2011 IEEE

WANG et al.: CONTROL AND INTERFACING OF A GRID-CONNECTED SMALL-SCALE WIND TURBINE GENERATOR
Fig. 1. Small-scale wind generator grid-connected system.
Fig. 2. Control diagram of the converter.
power, and can be used with a wide range of different rated
inverters.
II. SYSTEM TESTING AND ANALYSIS
A. System Principle
The configuration of the wind source converter is shown in
Fig. 2. A, B, and C are the ac output voltage ports of a wind
turbine. The rectifying circuit (D1 D6 ) transforms the ac volt-
age of a wind turbine into dc voltage. The function of the boost
circuit (L0 , D0 , V0 ) is to make the dc bus voltage stable. The
current control voltage source inverter (CCVSI) (V1 V4 ) offers
sine wave current to mains. Considering the isolated charac-
teristic of turbine winding, the system is connected to mains
without the isolated transformer. The SCR rectifier (T1 T6 ) acts
as balance load.
A self-tuning PID control based on the Lyapunov approach
for wind energy conversion systems is reported in [6], whereby
the controller parameters track feedback control. Song et al. [3]
adopted dc voltage outer loop to realize the active power transfer
to the grid and current inner loop ensuring fast response. Both [3]
and [6] have no grid voltage ug feedforward control; the output
of the current inner loop is zero at the start of inverter operation;
it means that the output voltage of the H-bridge is also zero at
that time, so the whole grid voltage ug is added to the inductor L
and boost charge the capacitor in the dc side of the H-bridge.
The dc side voltage will decrease only after the feedback current
iac effectively tracking the referenced current iac , and the output
of current inner loop has to generate part component to balance
out the grid voltage. Fig. 2 still uses voltage and current loops,
429
but with grid voltage ug feedforward control in addition; in this
case, the voltage of L is zero at the start of inverter operation;
thus, no current will charge the capacitor in the dc side of
the H-bridge. And the output of the current inner loop could
be smaller compare to the former control. In other words, grid
voltage ug feedforward control enhances the dynamic character
of system effectively, which prevents the grid boost charging
the capacitor in the dc side of the H-bridge at the start of inverter
operation.
In [3], the input current reference of the chopper is determined
for the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of the wind tur-
bine. Martinez Rodrigo et al. [7] measured the generated power
and increase or decrease in the torque reference to track the
peak power. In Fig. 2, a new MPPT is created by incorporating
it with grid-connected power control without wind speed infor-
mation. Since the accurate judgment of the maximum power
point must base on the stability of voltage of the wind turbine,
the output parameter of MPPT Ure is proposed working as an
instructive voltage of the input voltage of the boost circuit in
outer voltage control loop. The load of the system is the grid.
Normally, the voltage of the grid is not variable, so the output
power is reflected by the grid-connected current. According to
the theory of power balance between the input power and the
output power, the power of the wind turbine can be embodied by
the active current of grid connected. Therefore, the output of the
outer voltage control loop is used as the instruction of the active
component Ip of the grid-connected current. The phase and fre-
quency of the grid-connected current are decided by the voltage
of grid net; sin t in Fig. 2 is the phase locking synchronous
sine of the grid voltage. Combining sin t with Ip reaches the
instantaneous instruction of the active current iac . So, the maxi-
mum power point of the wind turbine can be tracked by judging
the grid-connected power.
The control of the proposed system can be separated into two
parts: dc voltage control and grid-connected current control as
illustrated in Fig. 2. The input voltage of the boost circuit Ure
is controlled by grid-connected power including MPPT, while
the output voltage of the boost circuit Udc is stably controlled
by the dc voltage loop. As a result, the boost circuit control
power switch can transit to switch off smoothly during all wind
speeds. Introducing iac feedback and current inner loop forces
the current waveform to be sinusoidal at all wind speeds, which
ensures that the current injected to the grid satisfies International
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards.
In this system, two strategies are used to improve the output
current quality. On one hand, since the converter is transformer-
less, decaying dc component of the output current injected to
the grid is very necessary. This control system computes the dc
component of iac by using the grid current sample, and then
compensates the dc component in the current loop. On the other
hand, in CCVSI, for avoiding V1 and V2 (or V3 and V4 ) be
open at the same time, a delay time Td is normally used for the
switch that be about to open. The presence of Td results in the
output voltage PWM pulse not equal to the command voltage
pulse. The higher the carrier frequency, the more distortion of
the output voltage, which causes nonsinusoidal output current
waveform. The introduction of the current loop, to a certain
430
extent, can reduce the impact of Td , and in theory, Td can be
fully compensated when the current regulation loop achieves no
difference. But iac tracking is some difficult to achieve no dif-
ference, so this control system modified the PWM trigger pulse
by software to compensate for the output current waveform. The
strategy called current feedback compensation method detects
zero-crossing of the output current iac and then generates a syn-
chronous square wave voltage added to the corresponding phase
modulation wave, to eliminate the dead zone in the fundamental
output voltage of H-bridge.
Compared with the inverter with frequency transformer, the
efficiency of a transformerless inverter is higher.
B. Smooth Control of the Boost Converter
For the voltage characteristics of small-scale low and wide
range wind turbines, a boost converter [5], [8] is often added
before the grid-connected inverter. The boost converter serves
to control the input dc voltage of inverters. Regardless of the dc
voltage output range the diode rectifier is, the input dc voltage of
inverter remains steady. Meanwhile, the boost circuit increases
the output power of the wind turbine.
The output voltage of the boost circuit Udc is controlled by
chip SG3525 A. The output of the PI1 compensator changes the
pulse signal, which corresponds to the duty ratio of the power
switch V0 .
For low, medium, and high wind speeds, the dc voltage is
controlled by the boost converter as follows.
1) Low wind speed: The converter will increase the dc volt-
age so that Udc > Ug (assuming modulation is equal to
1). During that time, because of Udc < Udc , the PI1 com-
pensator output is saturated so the switch V0 gains the
maximum duty ratio.
2) Medium wind speed: The function of the converter is to
regulate the inverter dc voltage as a constant. The PI1
compensator will cease saturation to keep Udc near the
referenced voltage Udc .
3) High wind speed: The dump-load circuit operates as a
variable resistance to control the operation voltage point
of the wind turbine so as to protect the inverter from high
dc voltage. When Udc is higher than Udc constantly, the
duty ratio of the switch V0 will decrease and the switch
V0 will then be turnoff. Therefore, the boost circuit switch
can transit to be off smoothly at all wind speeds.
C. Inverter Control with Compensation of Grid Voltage
Given the equivalent resistance of L- and H-bridge as R0 , the
output voltage of H-bridge is un ; therefore, the inverter circuit
can be shown as Fig. 3(a) [9]. Fig. 3(b) shows the equivalent
circuit of Fig. 3(a).
The initial state in Fig. 3(b) is zero state, so the initial current
is zero. The equation of equivalent circuit is
1 will be significant if the current loop does not erect rapidly.
Iac = (Un Ug ). (1)
R0 + sL
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 26, NO. 2, JUNE 2011
Fig. 3. Inverter circuit and its equivalent circuit.
Fig. 4. Dynamic framework of the current closed-loop.
The transfer function of the inverter main circuit Gm (s) can
be obtained from (1) as follows:
Iac (s) 1/R0
Gm (s) = = (2)
Un (s) Ug (s) 1 + 0 s
where 0 is the time constant, 0 = L/R0 .
Silent pulse width modulation (SPWM) technology is used
to drive the power switch V1 V4 in Fig. 2 and the gain of the
main circuit can be looked as amplified coefficient Kw . When
the duty ratio of SPWM is changed, the output voltage of H-
bridge will be influenced in the next period; the delay time is
equal to the carrier wave period of SPWM. Thereby, the transfer
function of SPWM and main circuit Gw (s) is
Un (s)
Gw (s) = = Kw e S s (3)
Uc (s)
where Uc is the control voltage of SPWM and S is the delay
time.
Normally, the carrier wave frequency of SPWM is about
10 kHz, so S is very small and (3) can be simplified as (4),
which is a one step inertial function:
Kw
Gw (s) = . (4)
S s + 1
The system load is the grid. Considering the fact that ue
cannot be controlled, the output power can be embodied by the
grid connected current iac . Controlling iac could allow access
to grid-connected power. In order to make iac track instruction,
the routine method is to introduce negative feedback of iac .
Utilizing the transfer and relationship function of every part, the
dynamic framework of current closed-loop is easy to achieve as
shown in Fig. 4.
In Fig. 4, Iac (s) is an input signal and Gc (s) is the emendator
of current loop in order to gain stable and dynamic characters
of current tracking. This study uses proportional compensator
P as Gc (s).
It is clear that Ug (s) is a disturbance signal in Fig. 4. During
the time of inverter starting, the phase error of current tracking
In this event, the inverter absorbs energy from the grid, which
WANG et al.: CONTROL AND INTERFACING OF A GRID-CONNECTED SMALL-SCALE WIND TURBINE GENERATOR
Fig. 5. Dynamic framework of disturbance compensate.
leads to capacitance C2 charging. The bus voltage will be high
enough to cause overvoltage protection if the phase error of
current cannot be controlled within a short time. Since Ug (s) is
observable, an open-loop fore-back can eliminate its influence,
which enhances the dynamic character of system.
Fig. 5 shows Ug (s) compensating via transfer function Gd (s)
to counteract the influence of disturbance.
Since the rectify voltage Ure has a relationship with the ro-
tation speed of the wind turbine and the rotation speed decides
the output power of the wind turbine, Ure determines the input
power of the inverter. Owing to the unchangeable voltage of
the inverter load, the grid-connected current reflects the output
power of the inverter. Thereby, the output of rectify voltage com-
pensator works as the amplitude reference of the grid-connected
current.
D. MPPT Control Via the Grid-Connected Current
The wind turbine exhibits a nonlinear characteristic and the
output mechanical power generated by the wind turbine is given
by [4], [10]
Pw = 0.5Aw Cp Vw3 (5)
where
air density (kg/m3 );
Aw area covered by the wind turbine (m2 );
Cp performance coefficient;
Vw wind speed (m/s).
The performance coefficient is a function of tip speed ratio
and pitch angle
 
98
Cp = f (, ) = 0.5 0.4 5 e(16.5/ i ) . (6)
i S
is given by
r R
= (7)
Vw
where r is the turbine rotational speed (in rad/s) and R is the
radius of the turbine blades (in m).
By substituting r from (7) into (5), we get
 3
r R
Pw = 0.5Aw Cp . (8)
There exists a particular value opt , which results in the point
of optimal efficiency where the maximum power is captured
from wind by the wind turbine [11]. Fig. 6 illustrates the me-
chanical powerrotational speed curves of wind turbine at vari-
ous wind speeds, which indicates that the wind turbine has the
431
Fig. 6. Powerspeed curves of wind turbine.
maximum power point (MPP) for each of the wind speed. And
its MPP varies with changing atmospheric conditions.
It is not easy to measure the wind speed in the rotor of turbine,
so an indirect approach is implemented. According to the theory
of power balance of the system, the maximum power point of
the wind turbine can be tracked by judging the grid-connected
power. This strategy has a simple structure and needs no addi-
tional measurements. The function of unit MPPT in Fig. 2 is to
find the corresponding rectify voltage reference of wind turbine
maximum power point. The compensator of the rectify voltage
loop is proportional and integral for realizing zero difference.
Therefore, MPP tracking can be achieved by incorporating it
with grid-connected power control without any information of
wind speed.
The control algorithm adopts a regular perturbation and obser-
vation (P&O) method by increasing or decreasing Ure constantly
to track the maximum power. The method can be expressed as
follows:

P : Ure (n) = Ure (n 1) + s|Ure |
(9)
O : Pg = Pg (n) Pg (n 1)
where
Ure (n) actual rectified voltage sampling;
Ure (n 1) previous rectify voltage sampling;
disturb direction;
|Ure | step of voltage disturb;
Pg (n) actual power sampling;
Pg (n 1) previous power sampling;
Pg difference of power.
The P&O method disturbs voltage Ure first, and then com-
pares the actual output power Pg (n) with the previous sample
Pg (n 1). If the power is increasing, the perturbation direction
s will be in the same direction; otherwise, s would be inverted.
Pg avoids the false comparison between Pg (n) and Pg (n
1).
According to (9), the flowchart of MPPT is proposed in Fig. 7.
III. RESULTS
To further verify the performance of the proposed al-
gorithm, a 2-kW single-phase inverter prototype based on
432
Fig. 7. MPPT control flowchart.
Fig. 8. (a) Experimental setup for prototype development. (b) Photograph of
the experimental setup.
TMS320LF2406 A DSP is established. The experimental setup
for the prototype development shown in Fig. 8 is established to
test the key performance measures of the converter including
the wind generator.
The type of motor drive inverter is Sunfast E350. The rated
parameters of the electromotor are 5.5 kW, 50 Hz, and 960 r/min.
The wind generator used is a dc generator and its rated power is
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 26, NO. 2, JUNE 2011
Fig. 9. Grid current and voltage waveforms. (a) One-third of the load.
(b) Three-quarter of the load.
Fig. 10. THD of ia c with grid-connected power.
Fig. 11. Power factor and efficiency with grid-connected power.
1500 W. Since there is a rectifier circuit integrated in the wind
generator, the output voltage of the wind generator can be con-
nected to any two ports among A, B, and C of the converter. By
changing the frequency of the general purpose inverter to simu-
late different wind speeds, different rotation speeds of the wind
generator can be achieved. The waveforms of grid-connected
current iac and the grid voltage ug are shown in Fig. 9: Channel
1 is the grid voltage ug and Channel 2 is the grid connected
current iac .
Fig. 10 shows the variation of the total harmonic distortion
(THD) of iac at different power output levels, which illustrates
the higher power generated, the smaller THD of current. When
the output power is over 30% of the rated power, THD is less
than 4%, which satisfies the requirement in accordance with
IEC 61727 (total harmonic current distortion shall be less than
5% at rated inverter output).
Fig. 11 shows the power factor and efficiency of the system
versus grid-connected power. Near the rated output power, the
power factor is 0.99 and the efficiency is over 94%.
According to the national wind farm grid code, if the voltage
of wind farm remains at a level > 20% of the nominal voltage
WANG et al.: CONTROL AND INTERFACING OF A GRID-CONNECTED SMALL-SCALE WIND TURBINE GENERATOR
Fig. 12. Transient current when the grid voltage falls.
for a period that does not exceed 1 s, the plant must stay online.
Therefore, the system should have the low voltage ride through
capability under grid disturbances. When a grid fault occurs, the
rectify voltage of the wind generator is higher than the reference
voltage of dump load, and the SCR circuit is forced to work only
to consume energy under this condition. On the other hand, the
grid-connected current can be limited controlled and this would
be effective to enhance the transient stability of the system.
In this study, a programmable ac voltage source is used work-
ing as the grid. Fig. 12 shows the transient current when the grid
voltage falls to 30% of the nominal voltage. It means that the
dump load and limited current control achieve the low voltage
ride through requirement of wind farm.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a small-scale wind-driver permanent magnet
generator connected to the grid is proposed. Experimental pre-
liminary results show that the output current injected to the grid
satisfies IEC standards and the efficiency of the transformerless
inverter is high. In addition, setup costs are very low. Further
work is in progress to test the performance of maximum power
tracking on an actual wind turbine in the field and to enhance
the low voltage ride through capability [12], [13] of fixed speed
wind turbine-generator system during network disturbance that
will give an improved power electronic interface for wind gen-
erator to the grid.
APPENDIX
AC asynchronous electromotor:
Rated power 5.5 kW.
Rated voltage 380 V.
Rated current 12.9 A.
Frequency 50 Hz.
Cos 0.77.
Rotate speed 960 r/min.
433
Wind generator:
Rated power 1500 W.
Startup wind speed 1.8 m/s.
Cut-in wind speed 2.3 m/s.
Rated wind speed 9.5 m/s.
Brake wind speed 14 m/s.
Gear ratio 1:2.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of J. Lai,
D. Riawan, and D. Wang, the Ph.D. students at Curtin, and
J. Zhang, the instructor of HFUT, for the precious data col-
laboration during the design of prototype and the experimental
tests.
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434
Haining Wang received the B.Sc. degree in auto-
matic engineering from the Hebei University of Tech-
nology, Handan, China, in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering specializing in photovoltaic
generation from the Hefei University of Technology,
Hefei, China, in 2005.
She is currently an Associate Professor at the
School of Electrical Engineering and Automation,
Hefei University of Technology. She was as a Post-
doctoral Fellow at Curtin University of Technology
from August 2008 to August 2009. Her research in-
terests include grid-connected inverter control, wind and solar power generation,
and distribution systems.
Chem Nayar (M86SM90) received the B.Sc. de-
gree in electrical engineering from the University of
Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, in 1969,
the M.Tech. degree in electronics from the Indian In-
stitute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India, in 1976,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering spe-
cializing in wind electrical power generation from
the University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA,
Australia, in 1985.
Prior to joining the School of Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering, Curtin University of Technology,
Perth, WA, Australia, in 1986, he held academic and industry appointments
in India, Singapore, and Australia. He holds the Personal Chair in Electrical
Engineering and is the Managing Director of Regen Power Pty Ltd. based in
Perth, Sydney, and Brisbane in Australia. In 1988, he established the Centre
for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technologies Australia at Curtin Uni-
versity and successfully managed the center for 15 years while undertaking
extensive research on wind, solar, and hybrid systems, both in Australia and
internationally. He has authored or coauthored more than 90 refereed journal
articles, several book chapters, and more than 120 conference presentations.
Prof. Nayar is a Chartered Professional Engineer and Fellow of the Institute
of Engineers Australia, a Chartered Engineer and Member of the Institute of
Electrical Engineers, U.K., and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 26, NO. 2, JUNE 2011
Jianhui Su received the B.Sc., M.Tech., and Ph.D.
degrees from the Hefei University of Technology,
Hefei, China, in 1984, 1987, and 2003, respectively,
all in electrical engineering. His Ph.D. thesis was fo-
cused on photovoltaic pump system.
He is currently a Full Professor at the School
of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Hefei
University of Technology and an Associate Direc-
tor of the Research Center for Photovoltaic System
Engineering, Ministry of Education, Hefei, China.
The projects he involved include photovoltaic grid-
connected power condition system and high power solar generation system in
Beijing, China. His research interests include renewable power generation, spe-
cial power supply, and high voltage transducer control technologies.
Ming Ding received the B.Sc. degree in electrical
engineering from the Hefei University of Technol-
ogy, Hefei, China, in 1982, and the M.Sc. degree in
electrical engineering from Xian Jiaotong Univer-
sity, Xian, China, in 1984.
He is currently a Professor and Dean at the School
of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Hefei Uni-
versity of Technology, Hefei, China, and the Director
of the Research Center for Photovoltaic System En-
gineering, Ministry of Education, Hefei. His research
interests include power system reliability, renewable
energy, and FACTS.
Prof. Ding is a Senior Member of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engi-
neering (CSEE).