Adaptive sensorless Maximum Power Point Tracking control for PMSG Wind Energy Conversion Systems

The major constraints encountered by a conventional Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) control for Wind Energy Conversion Systems (WECS) are perturbation speed versus control efficiency trade-off, use of mechanical sensors and system dependent characteristics. In view of these drawbacks, this paper presents a novel sensorless adaptive control for MPPT in WECS. The proposed control allows the generator to track the optimal operating point of the WECS under fluctuating wind conditions by an efficient two-step tracking process. The first step adapts an intelligent iterative approach to update the duty cycle of the boost converter to coordinate with the rapid changes in the wind conditions. A novel scanning process is initiated in succession with the iterative approach to counteract the non-constant efficiencies of the generator-converter subsystems in order to fine tune the obtained MPP. The performance of the proposed method is verified in simulation (PSCAD/EMTDC) and experimental results from a hardware prototype are also presented. The proposed method is compared with conventional perturb and observer (P&O) MPPT controller. The obtained results clearly demonstrates that the proposed control is more efficient than other conventional methods.