2017 14th International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals & Devices (SSD)

Development of a useful Wind Turbine Emulator

Based on Permanent Magnet DC Motor
Loubna BENAAOUINATE Mohamed KHAFALLAH
Laboratory of Energy & Electrical Systems (LESE) Laboratory of Energy & Electrical Systems (LESE)
Hassan ΙΙ University of Casablanca, ENSEM-EIGSICA Hassan ΙΙ University of Casablanca-ENSEM
Casablanca, Morocco Casablanca, Morocco
l.benaaouinate@ieee.org m.khafallah@gmail.com

Abdelouahed MESBAHI André MARTINEZ

Laboratory of Energy & Electrical Systems (LESE) Laboratoire Energie Renouvelable Propre Alternative
Hassan ΙΙ University of Casablanca-ENSEM LERPA-EIGSI
Casablanca, Morocco La Rochelle, France
abdelouahed.mesbahi@gmail.com andre.martinez@eigsi.fr

Abstract — In order to provide a testing for Wind Energy by regulator PI to obtain the characteristics and performances
Conversion Systems (WECS) control strategies, a Wind Turbine for apply to wind power conversion research .
Emulator (WTE) was designed and realized. The experimental
implementation of the WTE for WECS consists of permanent
II. SUBSYSTEM MODELS
magnet DC motor controlled by Pulse-Width Modulated (PWM).
A DC motor is used to generate speed and torque required by the
aero generator (PMSG) for producing electrical power. The A. Wind speed
control of a permanent magnet DC motor and the mathematical The wind speed model is generally represented by a scalar
model of the wind turbine are elaborated using Matlab/Simulink function that changes over time:
platform. Results confirm that the WTE can provide all
necessary parameters of the wind turbine system such as wind Vv (t) =f (t) (1)
speed, output torque, power coefficient and tip speed ratio.

Keywords- Wind Turbine; Wind Turbine Emulator; DC motor; The wind speed will be modelled in deterministic form of a
PI Regulator; Real Time control. sum of several harmonics:

I. INTRODUCTION (2)
Electricity production using wind energy has become one
of the important ways to deal with the growing energy
demands and environmental crisis as it is socially beneficial,
environmentally friendly, and economically competitive for
(3)
many applications. Therefore, a great deal of research has been
converged on the development of the wind turbine technologies
in order to increase the profits of the wind power and to make
the wind turbine more economical and efficient.
In order to provide a research on wind power technology, it
is needed to build a WTE to simulate the steady-state and
dynamic behavior of the system in a controlled environment
without reliance on natural wind resources and real wind
turbines. The WTE can improve the efficiency of the research
in WECS, it can produce a mechanical torque depends on the
wind speed and the possible presence of a device for orienting
the blades. Also it can be used for education to teach the
control, operation and behavior of wind turbine.
This paper presents a simple real time WTE based on Figure 1. Wind speed profile
permanent magnet DC motor with controlled armature current

978-1-5386-3175-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

44
 The present work uses this particular wind profile to be
reading by the emulator and used to calculate the reference
torque, which then drove the controller’s behaviour.
B. Wind turbine
The mechanical power of the wind turbine is expressed in
the aerodynamic by the well-known formula:
(4)
Where, R is the wind turbine blade radius (m); ρ is the air
density (kg/m3); Vt is the wind speed (m/s) and Cp is the power
coefficient.
Power coefficient represents the aerodynamic efficiency of
the wind turbine, it is a specific data for each wind turbine. It is
the ratio of the turbine power to the power of wind stream,
dependent on the pitch angle β and the ratio between the
turbine speed ωR and wind speed Vt. This ratio, called tip
speed ratio λ, is expressed as:
(5)
The aerodynamic torque is the mechanical torque available
on the low-speed shaft of the wind turbine. It can be expressed
by:
Where, Tr is the resistive torque, Tem is the
electromagnetic torque, f is the coefficient of friction, J is the
inertia moment, Ω is the angular speed of DC motor and K is
the motor constant.
III. WIND TURBINE EMULATOR
There have been many studies on wind turbine emulator
based on induction motor [18][19], permanent magnet
synchronous machine (PMSM) [17] and DC motor [3][20].
The structure of the WTE using a permanent magnet DC
motor is represented in Figure 2.
In order to emulate the real behaviour of the wind turbine
with a DC machine and its control, it is necessary to determine
the electromagnetic reference torque. The inputs to
mathematical model of the wind turbine are angular speed,
pitch angle and wind speed. The reference torque derived from
the model of the turbine is multiplied with Gear Ratio and
motor constant to obtain the reference current, which is
compared with the actual DC motor armature current. The
difference between the two currents is the input of a
proportional-integral (PI) controller. It is then used to generate
PWM gate pulses to drive the transistor of the DC-DC buck
converter that regulates the DC motor armature voltage. The
variation in armature voltage in turn generates a variation in the
speed of DC motor, which allows to obtain a mechanical
torque depends on the wind velocity and varies over the time in
similar way as the torque of the wind turbine.

(6)

The power coefficient is relative to the tip speed ratio λ and

pitch angle β. A generic equation is used to model Cp (β, λ).
This equation is developed according to the modelling
characteristics of the wind turbine, it can be expressed as [12]:

(7)

(8)

TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF THE PERFORMANCE COEFFICIENT

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6
0.5109 116 0.4 5 21 0.0068

C. permanent magnet DC machine model
Figure 2. Structure of Wind Turbine Emulator
A DC motor is ideal from the standpoint of control and
easy implementation, so most of the WTE is based on DC
machine with controlled armature current [5]. IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section we present the results obtained by
MATLAB/Simulink simulation for the wind speed signal
(9) shown in figure 1.

45
 Figure 3. Variation of rotational speed of the DC motor
Figure 4. Variation of armature current of DC motor
Figure 5. Variation of torque of DC motor
As it can be depicted from figures 3 to 5, there is a right
degree of agreement between wind speed profiles applied to
wind turbine model and characteristics of different responses of
WTE such as the torque, the speed and the armature current of
DC motor. It demonstrates that the PI controller has a good
performance tracking
V. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
In order to duplicate the similar waveform of the
aerodynamic torque of the wind turbine on a small scale, an
adaptation of the torque’s magnitude is required. This
adaptation is simply achieved through a gain which is the ratio
between the rated power of the machine and that of the turbine
itself:
G = Pdcm / PT
Figure 6. Adaptation of the aerodynamic torque
The test setup consists of the following:
x DC motor with rated values shown in Table II;
x Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG)
with rated values shown in Table II;
x DC-DC Buck Converter;
x Electronic card with voltage sensors and current
sensors;
x Calculator;
x Data acquisition card NI6009.
Figures 7 and 8 show hardware structure of wind energy
system and photograph of experimental setup.
A real time calculator provides for control parameter
adjustments whilst in operation. The Data Acquisition card
NI6009 (DAC) allows communication between the setup and
the user. Various turbine parameters like the wind velocity and
pitch angle can be set by the user. To calculate current
reference; the program reads wind velocity and pitch angle
value from the input data file, measured armature current from
current sensor and speed from tachometer. The calculated
reference current is given to the PI controller. The output of PI
controller is passed to hardware interface (PWM Control
Circuits) though analog output channel of DAC and finally
DC-DC buck converter drives the DC motor where the firing
pulses are generated by changing the armature voltage.
the output voltage profile of the generator (PMSG) directly
depends on the shaft speed.
(10)
Figure 7. Hardware structures of wind energy systems
46
 TABLE II. PARAMETERS OF THE DC MOTOR AND PMSG

EQUIPMENT PARAMETERS
DC MOTOR
-Type MSS-8;
- Permanent magnet ;
- Rated power:0.8 kW;
- Rated armature voltage: 90 V;
- Rated armature current: 10.7A;
- Rated speed: 3000 rpm

PMSG
- Type MA-6;
- Stall Torque :3.6 Nm Figure 11. The torque of DC Motor
- Rated armature voltage: 127 V
- Stall current:4.2A Most of the effort during the experimentation was made in
- Max Mechanical speed:6000rpm adjusting the weighting for the PI controller for DC motor.
Figures 9, 10 and 11 show the results of rotational speed,
armature current and torque characteristics of WTE for
different wind velocities. As it can be depicted from the
figures, there is a right degree of agreement between the wind
speed profiles applied to wind turbine model and
characteristics of different responses of WTE such as the
torque, the speed and the power coefficient. It means that the PI
controller has a good performance tracking.
As it can be depicted from the figures, there is a good deal
of match between simulated and experimental results.
The results verified that the WTE can efficiently reproduce
the steady-state and dynamic behavior of a wind turbine for a
given wind velocity.

Figure 8. Photograph of Experiment Setup

VI. CONCLUSION
In this work we design a simple emulation for WECS
implemented in laboratory. The system is developed on basic
calculator and permanent magnet DC motor.
The experimental and simulated results are very similar that
confirm the WTE can perform satisfactorily under different
wind conditions. The system could supply all required
parameters of the wind turbine system such as power
coefficient, tip speed ratio, output torque and output power.
The results obtained still accepted and we aim to improve
the emulator in future work. The next step in the improvements
Figure 9. The rotationnal speed of DC Motor is to design, develop and build a WTE based on asynchronous
motor. Integration of the effects of a pitch angle controller on
power output when the wind speed is different to the rated
wind speed which it would provide more realistic conditions
for the emulator.

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