Control and instrumentation for small wind turbines

Details of control and instrumentation for on-grid and off-grid operation of a small induction generator based wind turbine are presented in this paper. A micro-controller based system controller is used to connect/disconnect the wind power generator to the grid, and also to maintain the grid connection. Several real time situations are considered during the operation of the wind power generation system to test the designed control and instrumentation. The energy generated during the operation in the off-grid mode can be used for space heating or for consumer load which needs stable voltage in spite of the wind or the load variations. To achieve this, a phase control relay based electronic PI controller is designed which maintain the more or less constant voltage at the load terminal. In this research, a dump load is used and its terminal voltage is regulated by controlling the phase control relay. System instrumentation and test results are presented in this paper.