2nd IEEE ENERGYCON Conference & Exhibition, 2012 / Advances in Energy Conversion Symp
OPTIMAL SYSTEM CONTROL OF A BACK-TO-BACK POWER CONVERTER FOR WIND
GRID-CONNECTED CONVERTER
Giampaolo Buticchi, Emilio Lorenzani and Claudio Bianchini
ABSTRACT
The most common topology for micro wind turbine systems is
composed of the wind turbine directly connected to a Permanent
Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) followed by a AC/DC/AC
converter. The converter is realized with a AC/DC passive rectifier,
a DC/DC boost converter and a DC/AC full-bridge inverter which
injects the electric power into the grid.
Considering the cost reduction of power switches and Digital
Signal Processors (DSP), back-to-back inverter topologies have to be
considered for new projects, since they allow to obtain better energy
productivity of the wind systems.
In this paper a complete solution based on back-to-back topol-
ogy is presented.
This solution includes the sensorless vector control for the
PMSG, the Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) algorithm, the
d-q vector control of the single-phase grid connected inverter and the
power flow control strategies from the PMSG to the grid. It is worth
noticing that the two full-bridge power converters are controlled by
two different DSP which can exchange information only through the
value of the DC Link voltage.
Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the adopted so-
lutions.
1. INTRODUCTION
In micro wind turbine applications PMSG are widely used. In grid-
connected systems two major topologies of the first AC-DC power
conversion are used: diode-bridge (passive rectifier) followed by a
boost converter or three-phase full bridge (active rectifier).
The other power conversion stage is often a full-bridge that in-
jects the electric power to the grid.
The first power conversion stage has to be controlled to max-
imize the energy extracted from the wind turbine. The open loop
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is mostly used in commer-
cial power converters, but also closed loop algorithm can be adopted
[1, 2, 3] when the turbine characteristic is unknown.
The passive rectifier is the most common solution due to its sim-
plicity and low cost, but the active rectifier allows to obtain a better
energy conversion efficiency, because it can impose pure sinusoidal
currents in phase with the electromotive forces (emf) of the gen-
erator. Instead, the generator’s currents obtainable with a passive
rectifier are affected by a significant harmonic content and, due to
the phase shift between the currents and the emf, they deteriorate the
power factor of the system.
Moreover, it is important to note that an active rectifier allows a
bi-directional power transfer, making it possible to start-up the wind
G. Buticchi is with Department of Information Engineering (DII), Uni-
versity of Parma, Parma, Italy, giampaolo.buticchi@nemo.unipr.it. E. Loren-
zani and C. Bianchini are with Department of Science and Methods for En-
gineering (DISMI), Reggio Emilia, Italy, emilio.lorenzani@unimore.it, clau-
dio.bianchini@unimore.it.
978-1-4673-1454-1/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
generator when it idles, as required in many vertical axis applica-
tions.
A back-to-back converter is composed of two full-bridge con-
verters: the AC/DC generator side converter acts as an active recti-
fier, while the DC/AC converter is a grid-connected inverter which
transfers the harvested power to the mains. The two converters share
the same DC Link, see Fig. 1. An LC filter is used to connect the
grid-connected converter to the distribution grid.
CDC vgrid
PMSG
Active rectifier generator Grid-connected converter
front-end and output filter
Fig. 1. Topology of the back-to-back converter.
2. ACTIVE FRONT-END CONVERTER
The active rectifier behaves like a full-featured PM motor drive that
performs a Field-Oriented Control (FOC). In order to improve the
reliability and reduce the cost of the system, a sensorless control has
been implemented.
2.1. Flux Observer
The basic requirement in order to implement the FOC is the knowl-
edge of the rotor angle. To this aim, an emf-based flux observer was
implemented [4]. Starting from the machine model on the αβ coor-
dinate system, the voltage equations can be written as follows (the
direction of the currents is related to motor convention):

vα = Rs iα + Ldiα /dt + dλmα /dt
(1)
vβ = Rs iβ + Ldiβ /dt + dλmβ /dt
Where λmαβ is the flux produced by permanent magnets, Rs
is the phase resistance and L is the synchronous inductance of the
machine. From (1) it follows that the rotor flux can be expressed as
(2).
 R
λmα = R (vα − Rs iα ) dt − Liα
(2)
λmβ = (vβ − Rs iβ ) dt − Liβ
Indeed, in order to compute the rotor flux an integration oper-
ation is needed. As it is well known, the simple operation of inte-
gration in a real-time system is not feasible due to offset problems,
that will inevitably lead the integral memory to saturation. For this
195
reason, the integrator was substituted with a low-pass filter, which
approximates the integral operator for frequencies well above the
cut frequency. However, for lower speeds the low pass filter would
lead to unacceptable phase errors. In order to improve the observer’s
behavior at low speed, a feed-forward compensation of the low-pass
filter response was implemented in order to reduce the estimation
error with respect to the pure integrator.
The block scheme depicted in Fig. 2 represents the implemen-
tation of the flux observer. As the voltages applied to PMSG are not
available (i.e., no sensors are employed to perform this operation),
the voltages Vαβ could be estimated from the duty cycles, DCuvw ,
of the PWM modules and from the measure of the DC Link voltage,
VDC . The outputs of the block LPF Compensator in Fig. 2 are the
two terms |C(ω)| and 6 C(ω), which compensate the response of
the low-pass filter, regaining the correct phase lag and magnitude of
the ideal integrator. The term 6 C(ω) drives the block αβ/dq, that
represents the Park Transform, here employed as a rotation trans-
formation to correct the phase of the initial flux estimate, as stated
before.
In the end, a standard three phase d-q PLL [5] is employed to
extract from λmαβ the information regarding the rotor speed ω and
the rotor angle.
VDC RIα RI β
duty-cycles
Rotation Matrix
DCu Vα
uvw
αβ Low-pass filter αβ
DCv
DCw
dq
αβ
Vβ
Low-pass filter
LPF
Compensator
Fig. 2. Block scheme of the implemented flux observer.
2.2. Converter startup operation
As explained in subsection 2.1, the FOC relies on the esteem of the
rotor angle to correctly control the electrical torque. However, as the
phase voltage is not measured, the duty cycles are employed instead.
This mechanism, however, does not work if the PWM switching is
disabled, i.e. at the startup of the converter.
For this reason, an instrument transformer was added between
the phases u and v of the generator. With the information regarding
the phase-to-phase voltage before the PWM startup, it is possible to
preload the flux observer with the correct value of flux amplitude and
phase.
In order to perform this task, a dedicated PLL structure was
employed to correctly track the rotor angle with arbitrary genera-
tor speed. This structure, named transport delay PLL [6], is pre-
sented in Fig. 3 and represents a standard quadrature PLL where
the quadrature version of the input signal is generated by a transport
delay block. A constant delay T0 , that corresponds to a π/2 phase
delay, can be used only with a constant input pulsation, ω0 = 2Tπ0 .
When the frequency is not constant, as for this application, it is suf-
ficient to substitute the cosine function of the Park transform of the
PLL with the same transport delay applied to the sine of the esti-
mated angle [7].
Obviously, the angle of the phase-to-phase voltage will be lead-
ing the phase voltage by π/6, and its amplitude will be greater by a
Vq* = 0
In(t ) Vˆq e ω KT θˆ
αβ PI ∫ x(t )
Vˆd
0
T0 dq
delay
sin(θˆ)
sin
T0
delay
Fig. 3. Block scheme of the single-phase PLL.
√
factor 3. In order to correctly preload the flux observer these facts
must be taken into account.
The knowledge of the rotor angle before the PWM turn-on al-
lows to obtain a better converter startup, that, in any case, is critical
due to DC Link voltage.
In fact, before the PWM turn-on, the DC Link is charged with
a DC voltage level equal to the peak of the phase-to-phase voltage,
in fact the freewheeling diodes in parallel with the full-bridge tran-
sistors act as a three-phase uncontrolled rectifier. As it is known, the
three-phase full bridge driven by a sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) works
LIα LI β
in linear
√
modulation [8] with an amplitude of the first harmonic up to
VDC 3
2
,therefore this level may not be sufficient to prevent an over-
current because the front-end full-bridge has not sufficient DC Link
dq voltage to impose the desired phase current.
This overcurrent can be very significant in case of high effi-
C (ω )
∠C (ω )
λmβ
ciency PM generators since they are often characterized by a low
ω
d-q PLL
winding impedance.
λmα In order to reduce the initial overcurrent, an over-modulation
sen(θ ) cos(θ ) technique has to be implemented. In this paper the adopted solution
was the injection of a third voltage harmonic in the duty-cycles of
the standard SPWM. Other approaches, such as the Space Vector
Modulation (SVM [8]) would lead to similar results.
2.3. Torque Control
With the information regarding the rotor flux, the field oriented con-
trol can be implemented. Figure 4 illustrates the block scheme of the
field oriented torque control. The blocks uvw/αβ and αβ/dq repre-
sent, respectively, the Clarke and Park transforms, while the power
stage is represented by a Voltage Source Inverter (VSI). Two Pro-
portional Integral (PI) regulators control the direct and quadrature
components of the generator currents. Since a surface permanent
magnet generator has been chosen, the direct current component is
forced to zero in order to improve the generator efficiency.
The term Vqemf represents the feed-forward compensation of the
generator emf, and can be computed if the machine constant and the
speed are known. As explained before, during the startup the flux
observer is precharged by the single-phase PLL, as the duty cycles
are not available if the PWM is not activated.
2.4. Maximum Power Point Tracking
The wind turbine allows to convert the kinetic energy of the wind
into mechanical power and then into electrical power. The power
generated by the turbine, depending on the blades and wind speeds,
can be derived as (3), assuming a perpendicular incidence of the
wind to the blades’ rotational plane. In (3) Pt is the turbine power,
ρ is the air density, R the blade radius, vw the wind speed and
196
 by the flux observer (Fig. 2), is used to generate the current set-point
Vq emf Iq∗ (Fig. 4).
Other MPPT algorithms based on the Perturb and Observe
I q* Vq* (P&O) principle usually applied for photovoltaic systems, were not
Vα* Vu*
PI dq αβ 0
I$ q Vv* taken into account due to their poor performances when applied to
VSI PMSG
I d* = 0 Vd * Vβ* Vw* wind turbines.
PI
αβ uvw
Fig. 6 shows an example of an actual implementation of the
I$ d V0* = sin(3θ ) 6
Vuv
MPPT algorithm based on the knowledge of the MPP locus of the
Iu
θ αβ wind turbine. The numerical values used are the same of the experi-
Iv
mental test bed of section 5.
Iw
Iα uvw Below a specific value of speed (the cut-in speed, i.e., 100 rpm)
dq
Iβ
the converter is not operational. After that, the converter tracks the
VDC
αβ DCuvw MPP characteristic, and the torque request is parabolic. When the
0 Iαβ rated power of the converter is reached (i.e., 900W), the converter
Flux
Observer
1 Single-Phase enters the derating zone, where the maximum power is limited and
PLL
startup ? the torque request decreases with the speed.
If the power limit of the converter is not sufficient to keep the
Fig. 4. Block scheme of the implemented torque control. wind turbine in a safe operating area (i.e., below the maximum
speed), the converter stop the operation (cut-out), and other safety
mechanisms, usually mechanical brakes, intervene to stop the tur-
bine.
Cp (λ, β) is the power conversion coefficient that depends on the
tip-speed ratio λ and the pitch angle β.
1000
1
Pt = πρCp (λ, β)R2 vw 3
(3)
Converter output
800
2 MPPT
Derating
power [W]

600
For fixed-pitch turbines, the power curves for different wind Disconnection
400
speeds are similar to those depicted in Fig. 5. For every wind speed,
there is a particular turbine speed that corresponds to the maximum 200
power conversion (optimal tip speed ratio). Obviously, a wind con- 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
verter must control the turbine rotational speed in order to follow the
optimal tip speed ratio when the wind speed changes, therefore the
20
MPPT algorithm must be implemented. cut−out
Converter torque
reference [Nm]

15
cut−in
10
v8
Maximum power locus 5

v 0
7 0 200 400 600 800 1000
Turbine output power

Generator speed [rpm]

v6

Fig. 6. Example Power and Torque characteristics of an actual

v5
MPPT implementation.
v4

v3
v2
0 v1 3. GRID-CONNECTED CONVERTER

The purpose of the grid-connected converter is to transfer the power

0
Turbine speed harvested by the active front-end to the grid. However, the grid volt-
age vgrid must respect specific limits regarding its RMS value and
frequency before the converter can perform the connection. These
Fig. 5. Turbine power at different values of wind speed, vi+1 > vi . limits are enforced by international or country specific regulations.
Usually, the grid-connected converter must inject power with
With the knowledge of the turbine characteristics and the wind unity power factor, but the recent penetration of renewable energy
speed (that can be obtained with an anemometer on the turbine na- systems into the mains has caused some problems regarding the grid
celle), a speed-controlled generator can harvest the maximum power voltage stability. For this reason, the recent regulations impose that
from the wind. However, for small turbines, the anemometer is usu- a grid-connected converter must be able to work with power factors
ally not employed. In the implementation described in this paper, different from unity.
the MPPT is realized by controlling the electrical torque of the wind Since in wind applications the earth parasitic capacitance is sig-
generator to the optimum value determined by the turbine character- nificantly lower with respect to the photovoltaic case, the ground
istic. In particular, the measure of the generator speed, ω, determined leakage current issue is not critical. For this reason the topology

197
chosen for the inverter is the full-bridge driven by the unipolar (three
output voltage levels) modulation. A LC filter at the full-bridge out-
put is employed to reduce the switching harmonics due to the PWM.
The converter is separated by the grid by a couple of relays.
The main tasks of the inverter is the grid connection and current
control, that can be performed only if the conditions regarding the
grid voltage are satisfied. Moreover, in order to control the grid cur-
rent igrid , the DC Link voltage must be above the peak of the grid
voltage.
In order to correctly track the grid voltage frequency, a PLL was
implemented, the structure is the transport delay PLL employed also
in the active front-end converter (Fig. 3).
Many topologies of current control are available in literature [9],
for this application the d-q current control [10] was chosen for the
very good performances that it can obtain regarding harmonic power
distortion and zero steady-state error.
The block scheme of the current control is reported in Fig. 7.
From the grid current igrid a virtual quadrature system Iαβ is gen-
erated. With the grid voltage angle obtained by the PLL a Park
transform is executed, and two PI regulators generate the voltage
set points for the converter. In order to enhance the dynamic behav-
v
ior of the system, a feed-forward voltage vF F = Vgrid is added to
DC
the modulation index.
vFF
regulates the braking torque of the generator in order to fix the DC
∗
Link voltage to the value VDC−gen while the grid-connected stage
is still verifying if the grid voltage satisfies the requirements. When
the grid-connected stage starts injecting power into the grid, it also
∗ ∗
regulates the DC Link voltage to a value VDC < VDC−gen (mode
2).
The active front-end is implemented to limit the maximum brak-
ing torque (extracted power) to a suitably small value when it is
in DC Link control operation (mode 1). In fact, when the grid-
connected is not operational, a low power is needed to fix the DC
Link voltage. When the grid-connected becomes operational, it will
∗
be able to fix the DC Link voltage to VDC , while the DC Link
controller of the active front-end will be saturated to the maximum
value.
Upon the detection of this operation, the active front-end com-
mutates to MPPT operation (mode 3), seeking the maximum point
of power transfer. This is the normal operation of the back-to-back
converter.
In this condition, if a grid voltage fault occurs, the grid-
connected converter stops working, while the active front-end is
still absorbing the maximum available power (mode 4). This will
inevitably lead to an overvoltage of the DC Link, that is detected
by the active front-end, which returns in DC Link voltage control
operation (from mode 4 to mode 1).
S

I d* Vd * Vβ * vgrid 1 2 3
PI dq LF
Active front-end Active front-end Active front-end

I$ d I q* I q*
* *
VDC VDC
CF − gen Torque − gen Torque ω I q*
Vq * PI PI Torque
LF Control Control MPPT
PI αβ VˆDC VˆDC Control
I q*
I$ q θGRID
Grid-connected Grid-connected Grid-connected
PLL • Grid voltage check
*
VDC I d* Grid *
VDC I d* Grid
• Grid frequency check PI Current PI Current
Iα • DC Link voltage check
VˆDC Control VˆDC Control
• Relay disconnected
dq
Iβ
Delay Active front-end
αβ 90° Grid-connected
• Requirements satisfied • Regulator
• Relay connection saturation detected
• MPPT Operation
Fig. 7. Block scheme of the implemented grid current control.
4
Active front-end

ω I q*
Torque
MPPT
Control
4. DC LINK VOLTAGE CONTROL Active front-end Grid-connected
• DC Link overvoltage Grid-connected • Grid voltage fault
• DC Link control
In sections 2.3 and 3 the control scheme of the main tasks of each Operation
•
•
Grid voltage check
Grid frequency check
• Relay disconnection
converter were detailed, however further control is needed in order •
•
DC Link voltage check
Relay disconnected
to make the back-to-back converter fully functional. As a matter of
fact, each converter can regulate the DC Link voltage with a simple
PI Controller. If the controller is executed by the active front-end Fig. 8. Transitions between the modes of operation of the back-to-
converter, the output of the PI controller will be a torque demand back converter.
in order to charge the DC Link capacitor. On the other hand, if the
DC Link control is performed by the grid-connected converter, the
regulator output will be a grid current demand to discharge/charge 5. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
the DC Link capacitor.
The issue of the DC Link control is that the grid-connected oper- A back-to-back converter based on two DSP Freescale MC56F8323
ation is asynchronous to the active front-end, as the grid connection (for every full-bridge) was built and its performance was evaluated
must occur only when specific conditions are satisfied. Neverthe- with a suitable test bed. The converter was connected to a PMSG
less, the main task of the active front-end is to maximize the energy (1.2 kW rated power, 6 pole pairs, nominal speed 500 rpm and nomi-
harvesting from the wind generator. nal voltage 240 Vrms) connected to a speed regulated induction mo-
In order to render the implementation more robust, the two con- tor drive, a schematic of the test bed is reported in Fig. 9. The
verters do not perform any kind of communication, but the synchro- induction motor drive was controlled by a PC with a dSpace board.
nization is performed with the DC Link voltage and current moni- Fig. 10 and Fig. 11 show, respectively, the realized converter
toring and a specific switching strategy is implemented. and the test bed used for the experiments.
Fig. 8 presents the 4 modes of operation of the back-to-back In the following some oscilloscope captures are reported in or-
converter. At the converter startup (Mode 1), the active front-end der to highlight the correct operations of the converter in every con-

198
 Induction Back-to-back
Motor PMSG Converter

Grid
Voltage

Speed-controlled
Induction Motor
Drive
Fig. 11. Picture of the test bed comprising the brushless generator
Fig. 9. Schematic of the test bed realized for the experimental results and the prime mover.

Fig. 12. Singe-phase PLL employed compute the correct rotor angle
before the PWM turn-on. Phase voltage Vu (100 V/div), rotor an-
gle (0.5π/div), reconstructed quadrature system Vα , Vβ , (200 V/div).
Fig. 10. Picture of the realized back-to-back converter. Time base 10 ms/div.

dition.
Fig. 12 shows the correct flux observer precharge at the con-
verter startup. The phase voltage was obtained by recreating the
neutral voltage with a resistive divider in wye connection. As it can
be seen, the angle could be correctly estimated even if the only mea-
sure available was the phase-to-phase voltage Vuv .
The correct operation of the grid-connected converter and the
d-q grid current control are highlighted in Fig. 13, where a low dis-
tortion sinusoidal current is injected into the grid.
The following captures show the modes of operation switching
implemented for the DC Link control. In Fig. 14 the active front-end
converter is regulating the DC Link voltage until the grid-connected
converter starts the power transfer to the grid. After this point the Fig. 13. Grid current igrid (10 A/div) and voltage vgrid (200 V/div).
grid-connected converters fixes the DC link voltage to 400V and the Time base 20 ms/div.
active front-end commutates to MPPT mode. Instead, Fig. 15 shows
the transition of the active front-end when the grid-connected con-
verter is disconnected to the grid (i.e., due to anomalies in the grid the velocity profile of the prime mover.
voltage or frequency). When the voltage limit (430V) is reached, the
converter commutates from the MPPT mode to the DC Link control. 6. CONCLUSION
Finally, Fig. 16 shows switching from the MPPT to the derating
operating mode. Due to the long time base operated by the oscillo- This paper presents the overall control of a back-to-back converter
scope during the capture time, only the envelope of the currents is for wind energy conversion systems. Two full-bridges converters
visible. For the sake of simplicity, a linear torque-speed character- compose respectively the AC/DC active front-end for the wind gen-
istic was chosen for the open loop MPPT instead of the MPP locus erator and the DC/AC grid-connected converter. A suitable sensor-
of Fig. 5. The prime mover drive was instructed to perform a speed less field-oriented control has been implemented for the active front-
ramp from 100 rpm to 500 rpm (the rated speed). As can be seen, end and experimental results show the effectiveness of the solutions
the algorithm correctly chooses the braking torque in accordion to to control the generator torque. The grid-connected converter is able

199

Fig. 14. Grid connected converter turn-on and active rectifier com-
mutation to DC Link control to MPPT. DC Link voltage VDC , input
power (800 W/div), igrid (10 A/div) and operating mode indicator.
Time base 50 ms/div.
Fig. 15. Grid disconnection operation. VDC , igrid (10 A/div), iu (5
A/div) and operating mode indicator. Time base 50 ms/div.
[10] G. Franceschini, E. Lorenzani, and G. Buticchi, “Saturation
Fig. 16. Derating operation. Operating mode indicator, generator
speed and generator phase current iu (green trace, 3 A/div). Time
base 1 s/div.
to regulate the active power transferred to the grid and the experi-
mental results show the good performance of the d-q control of the
grid current. The control of the DC Link voltage represents a manda-
tory requirement, as no communication was implemented between
the two converters. Suitable mechanisms have been implemented to
ensure the correct operation of the two converters in any condition.
200
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