This paper presents the design, modeling and the experimental build of a 1.5 kW relatively low-cost wind turbine emulator (WTE) equipped by a DC motor (DCM) in order to simulate the static-dynamic behavior of a real wind turbine, including the gearbox. This emulator is integrated into a connected wind energy conversion system chain (WECS), based on the double fed induction generator (DFIG) configuration. The latter ensures the electromechanical conversion. It allows the transfer of active and reactive power with the power grid during hypo and hyper synchronous modes. The aerodynamic emulation principle requires controlling the DC armature current with a PI regulator. This leads to an electrical drive that applies a shaft torque identical to the wind turbine. The current reference is calculated as function of the static settings of the wind turbine and real wind speed data give different operating points. In addition, this paper also proposes to test the Tip Speed Ratio (TSR) based MPPT algorithm to extract the maximum available power on the emulator. The MPPT, the dc motor control and the DFIG power control algorithms are implemented in C, using dSPACE DS1104 control board. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the controlled dc motor to emulate the wind turbine with great performances of the proposed MPPT structure.

Keywords: Wind turbine emulator (WTE), Wind energy conversion system (WECS), Dc motor (DCM), Double fed induction generator (DFIG), Maximum power point pracking (MPPT), DS1104