MPPT Battery Charger for Stand-Alone Wind Power System

In this paper, a buck-type power converter as the battery charger for the stand-alone wind power system is proposed. The proposed power converter can harvest the maximum power from the wind turbine while generating pulsating current for the battery bank to improve the charging efficiency. The maximum power point tracking function is realized by the constant on-time control, the circuit parameter design of the power converter, and the characteristics of wind turbine. The pulsating battery charging current is implemented by the discontinuous conduction mode operation of the proposed power converter. Also, the overspeed protection of the wind turbine can be naturally achieved when high power output occurs. Circuit simplicity and high reliability are the major advantages of the proposed power converter. Hardware experimental results from a 400-W prototype circuit are presented to verify the performance of the proposed power converter.