S051052 Development of Experimental Power Simulator for Grid-connected Small Wind Turbine

Abstract

Evaluating power generation of a small wind turbine is becoming more important because the certification and feed-in law will be systematized in our country. However, the behavior of a grid-connected small wind turbine is not analyzed adequately and difficult to simulate only with the numerical analysis. On the other hand, experiments and measurements in the field are expensive and cost too much time. In this study, we calculated the torque of the rotor axis of the wind turbine under specific wind condition using numerical analysis called FAST provided by NREL, and produced the calculated torque on the shaft connecting a motor and a generator to simulate the real wind. The generator is connected to a grid simulator. Therefore the simulator we developed enabled the generator to produce power like the wind turbine in the field. We measured the torque on the shaft, rotational speed and power generated. Through some experiments and numerical analysis, and comparing the experiments on the field, we could simulate dynamic behavior which is not considered using FAST and found out problems to improve.