Direct-Drive Wind Power Generator System Based on Interleaved Boost Converter

Direct-drive wind power generator has been receiving increasing attention due to their inherent efficiency. By eliminating the need for a gearbox between the wind turbine and generator, these systems are less expensive and also require less maintenance. This paper outlined a procedure of adapting a small, standard, readily available PM synchronous machine for direct coupling to a small wind turbine. This was achieved through a two-cell interleaved Boost converter (IBC), which is composed of several identical Boost converters connected in parallel. The converters are controlled by interleaved switching signals, which have the same switching frequency and the same phase shift. By virtue of paralleling the converters, the input current can be shared among the cells or phases, so that high reliability and efficiency in power electronic systems can be obtained. In addition, it is possible to improve the system characteristics such as maintenance, repair, fault tolerance, and low heat dissipation. Moreover, the overall performance of the compromised design was shown to be quite good. All this was verified by simulation and experiment.