Power control performance evaluation of wind turbine based on a hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform

Power control performance evaluation of wind turbine can offer an important guarantee for reliable operation of power grid. Modelling is a general method to study the power control strategy. However, the power control performance of wind turbine is evaluated based on field test at present, because accurate results of power control test are not easy to be obtained by simulation. Combined simulation method in off-line simulation has been used with the consideration of coupling effect of electrical and mechanical components, but the dynamical behaviour in a long period of time cannot be investigated because of the low efficiency of solver. In the electromagnetic transient research of power electronics, real-time simulation is suggested with high efficiency. In this paper, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation method for the power-control capability evaluation of wind turbine is proposed. Physical controllers in the HIL include main controller and converter controller. Multi-time step of detailed model simulation was realized by different types of interface based on real-time simulators. Additionally, an experiment on power control of wind turbine was carried out. It is a convenient and time-saving way to evaluate the power control performance of wind turbine in the HIL simulation platform.