Application of torque transducer and rotary encoder in a hardware-in-the-loop wind turbine emulation

Wind energy is one of the most promising forms of renewable energy. For the constant evolution of power generation technology, the use of sensors is fundamental to the development of wind turbine emulators. A wind turbine emulator allows tests and evaluations of a wind power system, regardless of weather conditions. Therefore, to further improve this technology, this work focuses on the application of a torque transducer and a rotary encoder for the implementation of a closed-loop wind turbine emulator. The sensors provide the torque and speed feedback signals to the computational model so that the model could plot the power curves and produce the setpoint voltage used by a variable-frequency drive (VFD) to control a three-phase induction motor (TIM). The emulator was implemented using a control algorithm designed on Labview with a NI 6211 for data acquisition. Finally, the system emulates the behavior of a wind turbine, considering the variations in wind speed, aerodynamic phenomena, load effects, and pitch angle. Experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of using the TIM-VFD assembly for emulating a wind turbine since the wind turbine emulator behaved like a wind turbine in real-time.