Performance analysis of micro wind turbine based energy systems with series connected inverters and a novel switching network

Abstract

The increase in demand for electricity coupled with the obligation to use sustainable technologies, has led to research and development in small and medium scale renewable source based electricity generation systems. When it comes to the smaller systems, one of the important criteria in commissioning/ operating is simplicity of the system apart from the systems capability to produce power with acceptable standards. To meet this requirement, a novel switching network referred in this paper as comparator based switching signal selection (CSSS) network, has been proposed for controlling the inverter circuit in the generation system. The network enables the use of any two level inverter modulation schemes to control any levels of series connected inverter. This eliminates the complexity like generation of multiple carrier waveforms, performing complex calculations to generate switching signals. To demonstrate the effectiveness of employing this switching network in a generation system, the performance of a micro wind turbine based energy system has been analyzed using parameters like harmonic distortion of current, voltage and k-factor of the transformer. A comparative study of these parameters has also been performed to understand how comparable the performance of CSSS network is to the existing modulating schemes. The result of analysis and comparison shows that by employing a CSSS network, not only satisfactory performance can be obtained from the system, but also the control algorithm can be simplified. © 2017 the Author(s).