Grant: Engage Grants Program

Training of High Qualified Personnel and R&D in wind energy technology are of high importance in an expanding market for electricity production from renewable resources. Therefore, adequate and sophisticated laboratory size equipment are needed to understand the behavior of a wind turbine and to improve its efficiency by implementing advanced control strategies before testing on industrial size wind turbines. The wind turbine system, manufactured by Quanser, is an experiment setup ideal for analyzing and implementing control strategies through the pitch actuator. However, multivariable control for generator speed and voltage is done by a power electronic interface in a complete open architecture system, which does not exist in the actual version of the Quanser's wind turbine experiment workstation. In this project, a power electronic interface will be designed and integrated into the wind turbine in order to allow the implementation of control strategies for operation at all wind speed regimes. The upgraded wind turbine will be an open-architecture system suitable for real-time multivariable control design and implementation to be used in industry, education and research. This project will bring contributions to scientific knowledge, solutions for industry and success for HQP training at all levels of college/university education and research. Also, it will make Canada more productive and competitive.