Active Rectifier With Integrated System Control for Microwind Power Systems

This paper presents simple and effective control strategies for the active rectifier stage (AC/DC stage) of a grid-connected low power system for micro wind applications employing Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG). In particular a novel algorithm for the estimation of the rotor angle of the PMSG, based on flux estimators, was implemented using an adaptive low-pass filter coupled with a feed-forward compensator. This enabled a very smooth start-up operation of the PMSG, obtained by pre-loading the values of the flux estimator and using a single voltage transformer (VT) transducer. The solution for the power flow control between the active rectifier and the other(s) power converters connected to the common DC link was implemented without any digital communication between them, in order to obtain a solution suitable for modular architectures (e.g. to be used in conjunction with a grid-connected converter and/or an energy storage system). Simulation and experimental results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. The experimental validation was conducted using a grid-connected converter as load for the proposed active rectifier.