A Power Electronic Conditioner Using Ultracapacitors to Improve Wind Turbine Power Quality

The large variability in wind output power can adversely impact local loads that are sensitive to poor power quality. To mitigate large swings in power, the wind turbine output power can be conditioned by using a small energy buffer. A power conditioner is developed to smooth the wind power output by utilizing the energy of an electrochemical capacitor, or ultracapacitor. The conditioner is based on a single phase voltage source inverter connected between the grid inter-connection point and the ultracapacitor. The VSI shunt inverter injects or absorbs active power from the line to smooth the wind power output by utilizing the short term storage capabilities of the ultracapacitor. The ultracapacitor is connected to the DC link through a bidirectional DC-DC converter. The bidirectional DC-DC converter and VSI are constructed and field tested on a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine installed at the Missouri University of Science & Technology.