Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Over the last two decades, wind energy has experienced significant growth as a reliable, clean, and low-cost source of electricity. In 2021, the installed wind energy capacity reached 840 GW (gigawatts) worldwide, which lead to a reduction of 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year. According to the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA), Canada is now the 9th largest producer of wind energy in the world with installed capacity reaching 14.3 GW in 2021. Wind energy is now the lowest-cost source of new electricity generation in Canada. As CanREA has stated, the "2050 Vision for Net-Zero GHG" can only be achieved by increasing Canada's wind and solar energy capacity by almost ten-fold over the next 30 years. This will create thousands of well-paying jobs in the construction of new facilities, ongoing operations, and maintenance of these sites. A wind energy conversion system (WECS) consists of a wind turbine, generator, energy storage, power converters and, a fault protection scheme. These systems are complex, nonlinear and are subject to system uncertainties. Despite tremendous growth and a lot of research in wind energy, some critical technical problems remain unsolved. For example, robust maximum power transfer from wind to the load/grid line at variable wind speeds, loss reduction in wind generator and power converters, optimal coordination of protective relays during fault/abnormal wind, and optimized power exchange management between energy storage device (e.g., Lithium-ion battery) and wind generator require further research. The main objectives of this research program are to develop advanced and innovative control technologies to achieve energy-efficient, robust and sustainable WECS for both grid-connected and standalone modes, including artificial intelligence algorithms-based robust maximum power transfer, machine loss minimization, optimal power exchange management, novel fast and efficient switching device (silicon-carbide)-based power converters and fault protection schemes to cope with system nonlinearities and wind uncertainties. The developed control technologies as well as the trained highly qualified personnel (two PhD and three master's students) from this research program are expected to be utilized by the Canadian power and wind energy industries to meet the ongoing and future green energy demands while improving the energy system's performance, cost, efficiency, robustness, and sustainability; thereby making contributions to Canada's economic growth.