Maximum power point tracking of permanent magnet wind turbines equipped with direct matrix converter

This paper presents a novel control method for Maximum Power Point Tracking of wind turbines (WTs) equipped with a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) and a Direct Matrix Converter (DMC). The method calculates the optimum wind turbine speed and maximizes the extracted power from wind turbine. This is done by Hill Climb Search method, which is simple and does not need to know the generator parameters and no need to solve the complicated differential equations of generator. WT rotor speed is compared with its optimal value and then DMC controls WT until its rotor speed reaches its optimum value. Under this situation, maximum power is extracted from WT and is injected to the grid with unity power factor. It is implemented by controlling the phase and the amplitude of the DMC output voltage by Venturini switching method. Simulations are done on a 2 MW PMSG WT in MATLAB/SIMULINK to obtain the results, the wind speed was varied both using the Van Der Hoven method and changing the wind step. The obtained results verify the accuracy and simplicity of proposed method. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.