Variable-Speed Wind Turbine and Grid-Connected Generator

Introduction

This page contains a simulation (Fig. 1) of a horizontal-axis wind turbine.

Wind turbine simulation panel showing performance coefficient, torque, and power curves — Fig. 1: overview of the wind turbine simulation panel

3D Wind Turbine Visualization

Fig. 2: 3D visualization of the wind turbine (left) and controls for changing the viewpoint and nacelle rotation

Controls for changing the viewpoint and nacelle rotation — Fig. 2: 3D visualization of the wind turbine (left) and controls for changing the viewpoint and nacelle rotation

It is also possible to display a three-dimensional view of the wind turbine. The viewpoint can be changed by clicking the various buttons or by using a mouse drag-and-drop operation. If rendering the 3D view requires too much computing power, it is possible to switch back to a simulation without the 3D view.

The turbine speed and blade pitch angle follow the settings made in the main control area. It is also possible to manually adjust the nacelle orientation, but this setting is purely cosmetic and does not affect the wind speed captured by the turbine.

The 3D visualization of the wind turbine is implemented using the three.js library.

The background image is an OpenGL-style cubemap recorded in Tenerife. It is the work of Emil Persson (Humus) and is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. The original source is available online.

Implementation Details and References

Blade positions for two pitch angles β — Fig. 3: small pitch angle β (left) and large pitch angle β (right)

The turbine torque is calculated using two different methods, depending on the blade pitch angle β.

or a small pitch angle β (the blade plane is nearly perpendicular to the turbine rotation axis), the turbine torque and power are obtained from an approximation of the power coefficient Cp. The following references may be consulted:
- "Modeling and Simulation of an Induction Generator based Wind Turbine Systems" by Md Arifujjaman et al.
- Wind Turbine - Implement model of variable pitch wind turbine - MathWorks
For a large pitch angle β (the blade plane is nearly parallel to the wind direction), torque and power are approximated using momentum theory. The following references may be consulted:
- Noam Buckman, "Wind Turbine Aerodynamics: Theory of Drag and Power", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 24 mars 2015. Attention toutefois, il y a une erreur dans l'équation (8).
- Aerodynamic Performance - Momentum Theory - University of Notre Dame - AME 40530