IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 15, NO.
4, DECEMBER 2000
Dynamical Sliding Mode Power Control of Wind
Driven Induction Generators
Hernán De Battista, Student Member, IEEE, Ricardo J. Mantz, and Carlos F. Christiansen
Abstract—This paper concerns power regulation of variable-
speed wind energy conversion systems. These systems have two re-
gions of operation, depending on the tip speed ratio of the wind
turbines. They are distinguished by a minimum phase behavior in
one of these regions and a nonminimum phase one in the other. A
sliding mode control strategy is proposed that assures stability in
both regions of operation and imposes the ideally designed feed-
back control solution in spite of model uncertainties. Moreover,
power regulation by the proposed sliding control in the minimum
phase region is completely robust to wind disturbances and param-
eter uncertainties.
Index Terms—Power generation control, variable structure sys-
tems, wind energy.
I. INTRODUCTION
F IXED-PITCH wind turbines should operate at variable
speed in order to have control of the captured power. At
the cost of higher complexity and initial investment, variable
speed operation provides some interesting feature. For instance:
the increase of energy capture and the improvement of control
flexibility [1]. Therefore, as wind technology progresses,
new schemes of variable-speed wind energy conversion sys-
tems (VS-WECS) are proposed. In these schemes, induction
generators are often used. The wind turbine is coupled to a
squirrel cage generator (SCIG) connected to grid through static
converters [2]–[4], or to a double output induction generator
(DOIG) with slip power recovery [1], [5], [6]. A detailed
analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of these schemes
is found in [7].
The power efficiency of the wind turbine is characterized by
the ratio of the tangential turbine speed to the wind velocity,
called tip speed ratio.
Usually, maximization of the power efficiency is desir-
able. In VS-WECS, this is accomplished by controlling the
rotational speed in order to maintain the tip speed ratio at
its optimum value despite wind fluctuations. However, when
the turbine reaches its power limit [2], when the supplied
power is restricted by power quality problems of weak grids
[8], [], or when a power demand has to be followed such as
in some wind-diesel systems [3], the control objective is the
regulation of the output power. It can be achieved by adjusting
the tip speed ratio of the turbine in order to compensate for the
fluctuations of the available power as wind varies. The desired
output power, whenever it is lower than the available in the
Manuscript received May 24, 1999.
The authors are with LEICI, Faculty of Engineering, National University of
La Plata, CC 91, (1900) La Plata, Argentina.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8969(00)11006-X.
0885–8969/00$10.00 © 2000 IEEE
451
wind, can be captured at two different tip speed ratios, hence at
two different turbine speeds. Therefore, there are two possible
regions of turbine operation, called normal and stall regions [9].
The subject of this paper is the development of a dynamical
sliding mode control for power regulation of VSWECS using
induction generators. The feature of this control strategy is to
force an output signal to be zero in finite time through a discon-
tinuous control policy. In the normal region, where the system
has a minimum phase behavior, the sliding mode power regu-
lation strategy is robust to electrical, mechanical and wind dis-
turbances. In addition, to enlarge the capability of regulation, a
modified sliding control law is proposed which provides asymp-
totic stability in the stall region where the system has a nonmin-
imum phase behavior.
The paper is organized as follows. Description of the wind
turbine aerodynamics, and the generator and mechanical models
are provided in Section II. The dynamical sliding mode con-
trol is developed in Section III and its properties are validated
through simulation results in Section IV. Finally, Section V sum-
marizes conclusions.
II. WIND ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEM
A. Aerodynamic Model
The power captured from the wind by the turbine is
(1)
where
is the air density,
is area swept by the blades and
is the wind velocity.
is the power coefficient of the turbine, which is highly
dependent on the constructive characteristics.
It is usually presented as a nonlinear function of the tip speed
ratio :
(2)
where is the blades length and is the rotational speed.
A typical characteristic is depicted in Fig. 1(a). It can be
noticed that is maximum at the optimum tip
speed ratio . Therefore, to extract the available power at any
wind velocity, the control system should adjust the rotational
speed in order to force . If, on the contrary, extracting
a power lower than the available in the wind was desirable,
the power coefficient should be lower . Thus,
the wind turbine should operate at one of two possible tip speed
ratios or . Hence, there are two regions
452 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 15, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2000

Fig. 1. (a) Power coefficient C and (b) coefficient  of the turbine.

Figs. 3. WECS using (a) squirrel cage and (b) double output induction
generators.

B. Generator Model
Fig. 3 displays the most common schemes of VS-WECS
using SCIG [Fig. 3(a)] and DOIG [Fig. 3(b)] [7]. In the former
scheme, variable speed operation is achieved by controlling the
frequency of the static converter, and hence the synchronous
speed of the machine. In the schemes using DOIG, the voltage
and frequency are maintained constant, and a static converter
recovers the sleep power [in Fig. 3(b), a static Kramer drive is
used as recovery drive]. Variable speed operation is achieved
by controlling the firing angle of the static converter, and hence
the slip power. In Fig. 3, the gearbox is omitted for simplicity
sake (all the variables in the paper are referred to the high-speed
side of the gearbox).
Fig. 2. Captured power vs. rotational speed of the wind turbine for various Under the reasonable assumption that the mechanical dy-
wind velocities.
namics is dominant, the steady state models of the induction
machines are adequate for torque calculation [10]. A suitable
of operation, the normal region where and the stall expression of the generator torque for the scheme of Fig. 3(a)
region where . is [11]:
In Fig. 1(b), the coefficient given by

(4)
(3)
where
is illustrated. This coefficient is negative in the normal region, is the stator voltage;
positive in the stall region, and zero at . and represent the resistance of stator
The mechanical power vs. rotational speed characteristic of and rotor windings;
the turbine for different wind velocities is depicted in Fig. 2. The
and depict the leakage inductance of
operation points of maximum power efficiency, i.e. the points
stator and rotor windings;
where , are plotted in dashed line. This line divides
the operation region of the turbine into the normal region to the and are the electrical and mechanical
right ( and ) and the stall region to the left synchronous speeds respectively;
( and ). The former region is characterized by is the number of poles of the gen-
a high rotational speed operation, particularly at strong winds, erator, and
and is bounded by the speed limit of the WECS. is the generator slip.
DE BATTISTA et al.: DYNAMICAL SLIDING MODE POWER CONTROL OF WIND DRIVEN INDUCTION GENERATORS 453

The expression of the generator torque for the scheme of

Fig. 3(b) is a bit more complicated than the previous one and
its deduction is found in [12]:

(5)

where

and , where is the dc-link resistance.

In this scheme, the synchronous speed is imposed by the grid
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the dynamical sliding mode controller.
and the controlled variable is the firing angle of the thyristor
converter .
The losses in the generator windings affect the maximum ef- where is the reference value of the electrical power
ficiency of the WECS as well as the optimum tip speed ratio. (9)
The efficiency of the generator is , where is the
electrical (output) power and is the mechanical and the generator efficiency is given by (6).
(input) power of the generator. The electrical power is given by
, where in schemes using SCIG and III. DYNAMICAL SLIDING MODE POWER CONTROL
in schemes using DOIG. Hence, the gen- It can be noticed that the output of the system (8) depends
erator efficiency can be expressed as explicitly on the input signal . Systems like this are addressed
as relative degree zero systems. An attractive property of sliding
(6) mode control of this kind of systems, is the capability of zeroing
the system output in finite time through a discontinuous control
At this point, it is convenient to define a power conversion co- policy [13].
efficient of the WECS considering the conversion efficiency of In this paper, the control objective is compelling the normal-
the generator: , as well as the coefficient ized power error to be zero. Therefore, the following discon-
. Appropriate expressions of them are de- tinuous dynamics is imposed:
duced in Appendix A. The power conversion coefficient is
maximum, i.e. is zero, at the tip speed ratio . This op- (10)
timum tip speed ratio of the WECS, , is slightly greater
than the one of the turbine . The normal and that zeroes the output at time , where is the ini-
stall regions can therefore be redefined according to the sign of tial power error. The dynamical feedback control law required
, i.e. as the regions where and respec- to enforce the desired discontinuous dynamics can be obtained
tively. from (7)–(10):

C. Mechanical Model (11)

The effects of friction and stiffness of the transmission
shaft on the dynamic behavior of the WECS can be neglected where
provided the variations in the shaft speed are not fast. Then,
assuming the mechanical losses are negligible, the dynamical
model can be described by the following equation [10]: and

(7)
In Fig. 4, a block diagram of the dynamical sliding mode
where is the inertia of the overall WECS. The input signal
controller is shown. This controller has the property of imposing
is the electrical synchronous speed or the firing angle of the
the control signal necessary to enforce the system output to be
converter depending on the considered WECS configuration.
zero, independently of uncertainties in the knowledge of
As power regulation is aimed in this paper, the normalized
and . The dynamically constructed control signal takes the
power error is selected as the system output:
same values as the equivalent control law which satisfies
, and is a particular solution of (11) for initial
(8) conditions on [13]. Replacing in (7), the closed loop
454 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 15, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2000

sliding dynamics, which coincides with the zero dynamics [13], Then, the following modified discontinuous law, which pro-
[14], is obtained: vides asymptotic output tracking in the stall region, is proposed:

(15)

where
(12)

where .
Naturally, the control task of zeroing the output by imposing The dynamical feedback control law is obtained from (7), (8)
the discontinuous dynamics in (10) is possible if the zero dy- and (15):
namics is locally asymptotically stable to the equilibrium point.
In order to check stability, the nonlinear zero dynamics is ex- (16)
panded around the operation point determined by the reference
power and the wind velocity: The closed loop sliding dynamics is therefore given by:

(13)

where
, (17)
is the rotational speed at the operation point, and
includes all the higher order terms of . where , and the equivalent control
A suitable expression of for stability analysis is derived in signal is a particular solution of (16) that satisfies
Appendix B, and is given by under suitable initial conditions.
In order to obtain sufficient conditions for local stability, the
(14) closed loop sliding dynamics is expanded around the operation
point:

where and are the generator efficiency and the coeffi- (18)
cient evaluated at the operation point. It is known that the
condition is a sufficient condition for local asymptotic where , and includes all the
stability of the zero dynamics [14], [15]. higher order terms of . Thus, the following expression of
As it was previously mentioned in Section II-A, whenever the can be derived (see Appendix C):
reference power is lower than the available in the wind, there
are two equilibrium points. One of them is located in the normal (19)
region where the coefficient is negative. Then, from (13) and
(14), the zero dynamics is stable. Therefore, in this region, the is negative if and only if the gain satisfies . As
power supplied by the WECS is kept equal to its reference value, it is deduced in Appendix A, the coefficient can be expressed
independently of wind velocity disturbances and uncertainties as a function of the generator efficiency and the turbine coef-
in electrical and mechanical parameters, providing the sliding ficient :
regime is maintained.
It is known that, independently of the control methodology, (20)
power regulation in this region is only possible for certain range For practical values of , is an increasing function of .
of wind velocities. In fact, if the wind velocity increases be- Then,
yond this range, the speed limit of the machine is reached and
consequently, the controller loses its regulation capability. This
restriction is particularly hard in schemes with a narrow speed
range as those using DOIG with static Kramer drive. (21)

A. Sliding Mode Control in the Stall Region In practice, the maximum value of the coefficient is greater
In order to enlarge the regulation capability, power control than 2, so it verifies:
should also be accomplished in the stall region. In fact, this re-
gion has the advantage that the generator speed is lower than in (22)
the normal region and hence, the WECS speed limit is substan-
tially less restrictive. However, the system has a nonminimum Consequently, in order to assure local stability of the closed loop
phase behavior because the coefficient is positive in this re- sliding dynamics to any equilibrium point in the stall region, it
gion. So, a sliding regime cannot be maintained on the surface is sufficient to choose a gain satisfying:
[13], [14]. In fact, a sliding regime on would lead
to an unstable dynamical controller. (23)
DE BATTISTA et al.: DYNAMICAL SLIDING MODE POWER CONTROL OF WIND DRIVEN INDUCTION GENERATORS 455

Fig. 6. Wind velocity.

Fig. 5. Electrical power vs. shaft speed characteristic of the WECS.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

The features of the proposed dynamical sliding mode control
are examined through an example. The performance of the con-
trol strategy when the WECS operates in the normal region is
assessed first. It is verified that, provided the sliding regime is Fig. 7. Electrical power of the WECS controlled in the normal region.
maintained, the electrical power is kept equal to its reference
despite wind fluctuations. It is also shown that, when the wind
velocity exceeds certain value, saturation of the control action
arises and the behavior of the controlled system deteriorates. Fi-
nally, the performance of the modified sliding mode control, ap-
plied to the WECS operating in the stall region under the same
wind conditions, is evaluated.
A 90 kW WECS using DOIG with static Kramer drive is
considered in simulations. The control action of the WECS is
the firing angle of the static converter, or more precisely its co-
sine: . The firing angle is lower and upper bounded,
ideally by and , and hence .
So, as it can be observed in Fig. 5, the operation region is con- Fig. 8. Electrical power of the WECS controlled in the stall region.
fined inside the limits determined by and .
The electrical power vs. rotational speed characteristic for var-
is not exceeded, the proposed control strategy maintains
ious wind velocities are also depicted in Fig. 5. The maximum
the electrical power at its reference value despite wind fluctu-
power at the wind velocity m/s coincides with the ref-
ations. It can also be noticed in Fig. 7, as it was expected, that
erence power kW plotted in dashed line. Hence,
when the wind velocity surpasses , the capability of regu-
is the minimum wind velocity that allows power regulation at
lation is lost and hence, the electrical power grows notoriously.
the reference power. In case the wind velocity is lower than ,
Fig. 8 shows the electrical power when the system is con-
the turbine should be controlled to operate at its optimum tip
trolled to operate in the stall region, i.e. to the left of the point of
speed ratio in order to capture as much power as possible. On
optimum efficiency, according to the control strategy developed
the other hand, the curve for m/s intersects
in Section III-A. It is shown that, although wind fluctuations
the boundary at the reference power. Then,
affect the output power, the performance is satisfactory and reg-
is the maximum wind velocity that permits power regulation at
ulation is achieved in the whole range of wind velocities.
kW in the normal region.
The wind velocity signal used for simulation is depicted in
Fig. 6. Its maximum and minimum values are 10.5 m/s and V. CONCLUSION
13 m/s approximately. Note that this wind velocity signal does A dynamical sliding mode control for electrical power reg-
not fit completely inside the wind velocity range bounded by ulation of VS-WECS is presented in this paper. This control
and . methodology has the property of imposing the control signal
Fig. 7 displays the time evolution of the electrical power when necessary to enforce the desired feedback control law indepen-
the system operates in the normal region, i.e. to the right of the dently of model uncertainties. Moreover, when the WECS oper-
optimum efficiency curve. It can be observed that, whenever ates in its normal region, the electrical power is robust to wind
456 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 15, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2000

disturbances and parameter uncertainties. However, indepen- and is the generator efficiency provided the system state
dently of the control procedure, power regulation in this region evolves on . Then, from (A2), (8) and (9):
is only possible inside certain range of wind velocities due to
mechanical constraints. Therefore, to amplify this wind velocity (B3)
range, a modified sliding mode control is also developed that as- Then, it follows that
sures stability in the nonminimum phase stall region.
(B4)
APPENDIX A
Evaluating (B2) and (B4) at the operation point, and replacing
POWER CONVERSION COEFFICIENT
in (B1), the following expression of is obtained:
By means of a linear approximation of the generator torque
vs. speed characteristic:
(A1) (B5)
a simple expression of can be obtained from (6): The expression in brackets in (B5) is, from (A7), the coefficient
evaluated at the operation point. Then,
(A2)
(B6)
In steady state, can be replaced by (1). Then, it follows

(A3) APPENDIX C
DEDUCTION OF
Hence, the electrical power supplied by the generator can be
expressed as To obtain sufficient conditions for local stability of the system
controlled according to the modified discontinuous law, a suit-
(A4) able expression of has to be derived.
where From (17) and (18), it follows that

(A5)

is the power conversion coefficient of the WECS. Then, it can

be defined the coefficient :
(C1)
(A6)
Now, satisfies
Differentiating in (A5) with respect to , and replacing it
in (A6), the following expression of as a function of the (C2)
generator efficiency and the turbine coefficient results
Then,
(A7)
(C3)
The power coefficient is maximum, i.e.
is zero, at the optimum tip speed ratio . This value of Replacing (B2) evaluated at the operation point and (C3) in
satisfies (C1) yields:
(A8) (C4)
Then, from Fig. 1, the optimum tip speed ratio of the WECS
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457
Hernán De Battista received his B.S.E.E. degree (with honors) from the Na-
tional University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina in 1994. He is currently pur-
suing his Ph.D. At present, he is a National Research Council (CONICET)
Fellow and Assistant Professor at the EE Dept., UNLP. His interests include
control of wind energy systems and power quality.
Ricardo J. Mantz received his B.S.E.E. degree from the UNLP, Argentina
in 1980. He is currently Full Professor of Automatic Control at the EE
Dept., UNLP and Research Member of the Scientific Research Commission
(CICpBA). His primary area of interest is automatic control systems.
Carlos F. Christiansen received his B.S.E.E. degree from the UNLP, Argentina
in 1962. Since 1974, he has been Full Professor at the EE Dept., UNLP. During
1978–1979 and 1987–1988 he was Scientific Associate at CERN, Switzerland.
During 1992–1993 he was Visiting Scientific at the SSC Laboratory, Dallas.
Presently he is the Director of the Industrial Electronics, Control and Instru-
mentation Laboratory, UNLP. His primary area of interest is power systems.