Intelligent control based maximum power extraction strategy for wind energy conversion systems

This paper proposes a control strategy to optimize power output performance of wind energy conversion system. In order to obtain optimum power output from a wind turbine generator system, it is necessary to drive the wind turbine at an optimal rotor speed for a particular wind speed. Fuzzy logic based control algorithm is implemented with the embedded microcontroller which will track the maximum power point (MPP) by generating appropriate generator load references. The designed controller then forces the system to operate towards the dictated load reference. This paper discusses the low cost implementation of fuzzy logic based MPP algorithm in a 8-bit microcontroller using the tools and techniques to generate optimized real time code in C which will demonstrate how maximum power point tracker might provide elegant and efficient solution for increasing the efficiency of wind energy conversion systems, based on experimental results rather than on mathematical models. The proposed concept is verified and results are presented.