Hardware-in-the-loop simulative platform for wind turbine based on real-time simulation

As wind power becomes a high penetration in power system, wind turbine integration performance plays a significant role in power grid operation. Wind turbine controller strategy and its coordination with pitch system, generator, convertor, etc., are key of wind turbine performance. This paper presents the work of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) wind turbine simulative platform which is dedicated for wind turbine control strategy testing at the present stage, and provides a software framework for further expansion such as the integration of generator and convertor at full power in real-time simulations. The HIL platform consist of software part and hardware part. The software part provides real-time simulation environment and wind turbine model simulation, while hardware is the real component, which is the PLC controller specific in this HIL platform, and these two parts are connected via hardwired communication methods, including Modbus, Canopen, RS485, etc.. A 3MW wind turbine main controller is tested on the HIL simulative platform to validate the platform, and test result is analyzed which could provide a suggestion of improvements to wind turbine main controller.