Flicker mitigation strategy for a doubly fed induction generator by torque control

Owing to the rotational sampling of turbulence, wind shear and tower shadow effects grid connected variable speed wind turbines could lead to the power fluctuations which may produce flicker during continuous operation. A model of an megawatt (MW)-level variable speed wind turbine with a doubly fed induction generator is presented to investigate the flicker mitigation. Taking advantage of the large inertia of the wind turbine rotor, a generator torque control (GTC) strategy is proposed, so that the power oscillation is stored as the kinetic energy of the wind turbine rotor, thus the flicker emission could be reduced. The GTC scheme is proposed and designed according to the generator rotational speed. The simulations are performed on the national renewable energy laboratory 1.5 MW upwind reference wind turbine model. Simulation results show that damping the generator active power by GTC is an effective means for flicker mitigation of variable speed wind turbines during continuous operation.