Wind turbine emulation using doubly fed induction motor

In recent years, there has been significant growth in wind energy based power generation. This has encouraged research on the various aspects and effect of the installation of wind power plants. Wind turbine emulators (WTE) are being employed in research laboratories as they reproduce the torque developed by a wind turbine at a given wind speed. Commonly, DC motors or induction motors are employed for wind turbine emulation. However, DC motors require frequent maintenance, are expensive and bulky. With better controllability and lesser maintenance costs, doubly fed induction motor (DFIM) can be useful for wind turbine emulation. This paper presents modeling and control of DFIM as a WTE in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. Further, a start-up sequence using direct torque control (DTC) is proposed for the DFIM.