Study for Small Size Wind Power Generating System Using Switched Reluctance Generator

Recently, problems such as air pollution and global warming become serious because of increasing consumption of the fossil fuel. Therefore, there have been many studies related to the natural energy generation system effective to cope with these problems. The small size wind power generating system is one of the most useful generation systems utilizing natural energy. Now, permanent magnet type synchronous generator or induction generator is used for the wind power generating system. However, material cost of the permanent magnet type synchronous generator is high, though the generation efficiency is high, and the efficiency of the induction generator is low, though it is tough and requires little maintenance. Therefore, we focus attention on SRM (switched reluctance motor) which is characterized by simple structure, toughness, and high efficiency. And we studied a small size wind power generating system which uses the SRM as a SRG (switched reluctance generator). In this paper, configuration of the small size wind power generating system using a SRG, the generation principle and an experimental set up and results are presented. We also propose a power control method by calculated the magnetization energy of the SRG. Also, we propose MPPT (maximum power point tracking) control method based on foregoing control method and constant resistance control method. And we show validity of the proposed control method by experimental results.