Experimental Study of P&O MPPT Control

For Wind PMSG Turbine

Badreddine Lahfaoui (*), Smail Zouggar, Mohamed Larbi Elhafyani, Mohammed Seddik
Laboratory of Electrical Engineering and Maintenance
Higher School of Technology
Oujda, Morocco
lbadreddine@gmail.com

Abstract—The objective of this article is to study experimentally The objective of our control is to eliminate the mechanical
optimizing of a PMSG wind turbine connected to a DC-DC sensors such as anemometers and tachometers.
converter (Boost) and a resistive load. For this, tests were
conducted to determine the law of open loop control (power This article is organized as follows: Section II presents the
versus the duty cycle for different values of wind speed and load). modeling of a wind turbine. An open loop study of a wind
The results showed that the power passes through a maximum turbine associated with the Boost converter is discussed in
point. In order to extract the maximum power, for different Section III. Section IV describes the closed-loop system (wind
values of wind speeds and load, an MPPT control "Perturb and turbine, DC-DC converter, MPPT P & O). The experimental
Observe" P & O has been implemented on a DSPACE 1104. The results are presented and discussed in section V. Finally, a
experimental results showed the performance of the method conclusion is given in Section VI.
suggested.
II. MODELING OF THE WIND TURBINE
Keywords-Wind turbine; MPPT; P&O; Boost Converter; The Laboratory of Electrical Engineering and Maintenance
DSPACE 1104. (LEEM) is equipped with a wind tunnel containing a
I. INTRODUCTION permanent magnet synchronous generator wind turbine
“Fig.1”.
The operation of renewable energy systems in their
maximum power point is very important in order to increase
their effectiveness for using them in isolated sites or connecting
to the grid.
The wind turbine systems are considered as renewable
energy sources clean and efficient, they can be functioned with
a constant or variable wind speed.
Indeed, these chains of wind conversion often use a
permanent magnet synchronous generator PMSG. In order to
maximize the effectiveness of the aerogenerator wind turbine
and to extract the maximum of power, various solutions have
been studied at different levels of the chain of conversion
[1, 2]. A great number of Maximum Power Point Tracking
(MPPT) techniques and various topologies of converters were
proposed to extract the maximum power. These techniques are
different in terms of cost, speed of convergence, complexity,
popularity, sensors required, implementation and other criteria
[3]. Figure 1. Wind tunnel tests.

Related works classified these methods in two categories:
conventional techniques and artificial intelligence techniques.
The most important techniques are Fractional Voc and Isc, Hill
Climbing(HC), Perturb and Observe (P&O), Incremental
Conductance (lnc Cond), and artificial intelligence techniques
such as Fuzzy Logic and Neural Network [3,4] and other
analog methods such as the control loop of the voltage [5].
This article focuses on the real-time tracking of the
maximum power point for a wind turbine PMSG, The
objective is to consolidate and complete our first research
work entitled « Experimental Modeling and Control of a Small
Wind PMSG Turbine » [6].
A. Experimental Tests in Wind Tunnel
In order to determine the electrical characteristics of our
wind turbine, we have performed tests into its wind tunnel
(primary source of energy).
For this, the measurements of voltage and current at the
output of the generator are carried out for each wind speed
generated by the wind tunnel and each value of the resistive
load from 0 to 250 Ω. Fig. 2 shows the experimental data taken
during the tests. It is noted that all of these curves pass through
a maximum point [6].

978-1-4673-7894-9/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

  At 8m/s the maximum power is between 17W and 18.5
150 W for a duty cycle between 0.5 and 0.65.
MPPT curve  At 10 m/s the maximum power is between 45 W and
52 W for a duty cycle between 0.55 and 0.65.
 At 11 m/s the maximum power is between 66 W and
v=12m/s 79 W for a duty cycle between 0.55 and 0.7.
100
In order to test the effect of the load on the power delivered
Power (W)

by the wind turbine system, we performed power

measurements for a fixed wind speed and variable load (50 Ω,
100 Ω and 2 kΩ).
The Fig.4 shows these measurements. We notice that the
50 maximum power remains constant regardless of the load value.
v=9 m/s And that for each load value, there is a duty cycle that
corresponds to this optimum power
v=8 m/s  The optimal duty cycle is around 0.5 for a load of
50 Ω.

0  The optimal duty cycle is around 0.65 for a load of

0 20 40 60 80 100 Ω.
Voltage (V)  The optimal duty cycle is around 0.85 for a load of
2 kΩ.
Figure 2. MPPT Curve of Wind turbine.
60
III. CONTROL OF THE WIND TURBINE SYSTEM WITHOUT
R=50
MPPT 
Power (W)

A. open loop Study 40

In order to determine the law of open loop control, we
associated our wind turbine with a Boost converter. Following R=100 
a whole of test, for various values of wind speed and load, we 20
have measured the power at each duty cycle.
R=2 k 
We confirm, through these tests, that our wind turbine has a
maximum power point, which is the optimal point for an 0
effective use of our system. The Fig. 3 illustrates the power 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
generated by the wind turbine system according to the duty Duty cycle
cycle for a fixed load of 100 Ω and different values of wind
speed.
Figure 4. Power as a function of duty cycle for a variable load and a fixed
wind speed.
80
v=11(m/s) IV. CONTROL OF THE WIND TURBINE SYSTEM WITH MPPT
60 A. block diagram in closed loop
v=10(m/s)
Power (W)

We aim to exploit the maximum power supplied by the

40 wind turbine for any given wind speed. To do so, we have
implemented, in the DSPACE 1104 card the MPPT control of
v= (8m/s) our wind turbine associated with a Boost converter.
20
The Fig.5 represents the block diagram of the hardware
setup.
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Duty cycle

Figure 3. Power as a function of duty cycle for a fixed load of 100 Ω and a
variable wind speed.

Figure 5. Block diagram of the hardware setup.
B. DC-DC converter (Boost)
The basic circuit of the Boost topology DC-DC [7] is
represented in Fig. 6.
C. The MPPT Control (P&O)
The MPPT algorithm P&O is mainly used, due to its ease
of implementation and its low cost.
It is based on the following criterion: in Fig. 7, if the
operating voltage of the generator voltage is perturbed in a
given direction and dp/dV>0, it is known that the perturbation
moved the operating point toward the MPP, the P&O algorithm
would then continue to perturb the generator voltage in the
same direction. Otherwise, if dp/dV<0 then the change in
operating point moved away from the MPP, and the P&O
algorithm reverses the direction of the perturbation. In other
words the system works by increasing or decreasing the
operating voltage and observing its impact on the output
power.
The Perturb and Observe (P&O) has been implemented to
extract maximum power at each instant. Fig. 8 summarizes the
control action of the P&O method. The flowchart of the
implemented algorithm is shown in Fig. 8. The operating
voltage is perturbed with every MPPT cycle. As soon as the
MPP is reached, it will oscillate around the ideal operating
voltage. For example if the controller senses that the input
power increases (dp>0) and the voltage (dV<0), it will decrease
(-) Vref to bring it closer to the MPP [6].

Figure 6. Boost converter.

If the inductance and capacity (L, Ce, Cs), are carefully

calculated, they could filter the current and minimize the ripple
factor of the input voltage and the output voltage of the
converters. r in series with the inductance represents the
resistance of the conductor of coil.
Figure 7. Sign of the dP/dV at different positions on the power
The equations below represent, in continuous mode, the characteristic.
expressions which make possible the deduction of the values
from each element of the converters (inductance L, output
capacitor Cs, input capacitor Ce).
VE .X 0
L , X 0  0.125 (1)
f.Ismin
D.Is
Cs  , Is  Ismax , Vs  10mv (2)
f.Vs

D 1 VE
Ce   1% (3)
8.L.f 2
VE VE
VE
 Figure 9. The hardware setup of the system.

A. Implementation of the MPPT Method

In order to track in real time the maximum power point
MPP of our wind turbine, the SIMULINK MPPT control
block, shown in Fig. 10, must be downloaded to the DSPACE
board.
The filters are used for removing any high frequency noise
or any switching noise that appears in the signals. As shown in
Fig. 10 the instantaneous measured voltage and current is then
multiplied by each other to obtain the wind turbine
instantaneous power [8].
The current and voltage are applied to the MPPT algorithm
to generate the required duty cycle. The output signal of the
MPPT algorithm is then applied to the DS1104SL_DSP_PWM
block which is used to generate the required switching signal to
drive the MOSFET.
Figure 8. The flowchart of the P&O MPPT method.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A. The hardware setup of the MPPT system
In order to validate the MPPT method proposed, as well as
the results obtained in simulation, the implementation of the
MPPT hardware setup is done by using DSPACE real time
control in our research lab. The Fig. 9 shows “the hardware
setup of the MPPT system”.
The experimental results were achieved with the parameters
of the boost converter mentioned in the table I:
Figure 10. MPPT SIMULINK model implemented in dSPACE 1104.
TABLE I. BOOST CONVERTER COMPONENTS AND HARDWARE USED IN
THE TEST
B. the MPPT control tests in real time
Boost Converter Parameters The experiments were conducted at the University
L 42uH Mohammed 1 in Laboratory of Electrical Engineering and
r 0.2 Ω
Ce Ce=1000uF/250V
Maintenance (LEEM) from 15 June to 4 July 2015. Several
Cs Cs= 1000uF/250V tests are performed to validate and verify our MPPT control:
Resistive Load RL 100 Ω.
 Testing the MPPT control with a fixed wind speed and
Controller type :dsPACE 1104 DSP
Mosfet Type : IRFp450 a variable load.
Diode Type :BYW98-200
 Testing the MPPT control with a variable wind speed
Components used in the Measurement circuit
and a fixed load.
Current Transducer AC/DC Current Probe 10A/1V-
100A/1V

Voltage Sonde sonde différentielle ST1000

 1) Testing the MPPT control with a fixed wind speed and
a variable load:
In order to measure the flexibility of our MPPT control
with the load variation we conducted a test on a fixed wind
speed of 10m / s and a variable load of 100 Ω to 50 Ω. The
graphs below show the results.
During this test, we started in the beginning with a load of
100 Ω and after 250 seconds, a change of load towards 50 Ω is
imposed on the system in order to see its reaction.
We found through Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 that this change did
not influence on the maximum power, i.e. the maximum power
remains constant even if there's a change in load.
However the change of the resistive load has changed the
optimal duty cycle of the control, on the interval of 100 Ω the
duty cycle is between 0.6 and 0.8 while, on the interval of 50 Ω
the duty cycle became between 0.5 and 0.6.
Figure 11. Experimentally Tracking of the MPP with changing of the load.
(in ControlDesk)
Figure 12. Experimental tracking of the MPP with changing of the load.
(in osciloscope)
2) Testing the MPPT control with a variable wind speed
and a fixed load
In order to test the reaction of our system to the variation of
the wind speed, we have performed a test with a variable wind
speed and a fixed load of 100 Ω.
We notice in the Fig. 13, using ControlDesk that with the
evolution of the wind speed, the maximum power is changed
accordingly. The MPPT method follows the maximum power
under these conditions successfully.
We can also observe the same results displayed on the
oscilloscope, with a scale of (80 Watt= 10 v) and (11 m/s= 10
v), as shown in Fig.14.
Figure 13. Experimental tracking of the MPP with changing of the wind
speed. (in ControlDesk)
 [7] M. seddik, S. Zouggar, F. Z. Kadda, A. Aziz, L. Ahafyani, R. Aboutni, “
The automatic voltage control developed for the maximum power point
tracking of a PV,” International Journal of Electrrical Engineering &
Technology (IJEET),vol 4, issue 5, pp. 173-183, September - October
2013.
[8] A. M. Noman, K. E. Addoweesh, H. M. Mashaly, “ Simulation and
DSPACE hardware implementation of the MPPT techniques using buck
boost converter,” Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE), IEEE
27th Canadian Conference, Toronto, pp.1 – 8, 4-7 May 2014 .

Figure 14. Experimental tracking of the MPP with changing of the wind.
speed (in osciloscope)

VI. CONCLUSION
This work has allowed us to consolidate and to complete
our research on a small wind turbine PMSG with an internal
rectifier. During our first research work; a special attention is
paid to experimental modeling and validation of the wind
turbine model. This model allowed us to deduce the electrical
characteristics of our system. All the curves go through a
maximum power point. Hence the need to associate an MPPT
control (P & O) with the DC-DC converter in order to extract
the maximum power during the change of wind speed.
In order to validate the MPPT method proposed, as well as
the simulation results obtained in the research, the
implementation of the MPPT hardware setup is done by using
DSPACE card.
The MPPT control tracks in real time the maximum power
point MPP of our wind turbine whatever the variation of the
wind speed.
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