Innovative Wind-Cube Tracking System using Vane Control: Design and Implementation

• Published in: 2019 16th Conference on Electrical Machines, Drives and Power Systems (ELMA) pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: ABDELLATEEF, Reda Y., Farouk ABDELGAWAD, Amal, SABRY, Waheed, ABOUZAYED, Usama
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-06-2019
• Subjects: Blades; Control systems; Gears; tracking system; Vane control algorithm; Wind energy; Wind speed; Wind turbines; wind-cube
• DOI: 10.1109/ELMA.2019.8771506

The wind-cubes are distributed generation (DG) devices that convert the wind energy into electrical energy locally. The characteristics of these wind-cubes have a direct impact on the energy generation efficiency and power quality of the distribution network connected to. The wind energy and, hence, the produced electrical energy are greatly affected by environmental factors, mainly the wind direction which often fluctuates randomly. If the wind direction is not perpendicular to the wind-cube swept surface, a wind stress occurs and the output energy decreases dramatically. The tracking systems can track the wind direction changes and may direct the wind-cubes to face the wind direction perpendicularly through the wind-cube control system. These systems can drive the wind-cube and its permanent-magnet synchronous-generator (PMSG) room to revolve around the tower centre. This permanently keeps the wind-cube blades scanning surface perpendicular to the wind direction. In this paper, an innovative wind-cube tracking system is proposed. This wind-cube tracking system is based on Mitsubishi programmable logic controller (PLC) of type FX3u-32M control system. The wind-cube tracking system is studied in detail, designed with a sufficient algorithm, and implemented with a real tracking-system prototype having suitable dimensions. The control algorithm depends on Vane control technique that uses the measured wind directions. In order to write the PLC control program, PLC programming language used was the ladder diagrams language. Therefore and due to the different wind directions, which can be easily tracked and detected by the tracking system, the generated electrical energy is expected to increase as the performance and quality are improved. The problem of cable twisting is solved by a developed special technique.