IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO.

3, JUNE 2001 625

Control Strategies for Enhanced Power Smoothing in

Wind Energy Systems Using a Flywheel Driven by a
Vector-Controlled Induction Machine
Roberto Cárdenas, Member, IEEE, Rubén Peña, Member, IEEE, Greg Asher, Member, IEEE, and
Jon Clare, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper presents a novel control strategy for

power smoothing in wind energy applications, especially those
feeding a stand-alone load. The system is based on a vector-con-
trolled induction machine driving a flywheel and addresses the
problem of regulating the dc-link system voltage against both
input power surges/sags from a wind turbine or sudden changes in
load demand. The control is based on a feedforward compensation
scheme augmented by a nonlinear controller. Two feedforward
compensation schemes are discussed and the limitations and
performance of each scheme are analyzed. Experimental results
are presented which verify the excellent performance of the
feedforward compensation technique.
Index Terms—Flywheels, fuzzy control, variable-speed drives,
wind energy.

I. INTRODUCTION

I T IS well known that the mechanical shaft power obtained

from a wind turbine may be approximated by [1]
Fig. 1. Proposed compensation system.

(1)
In this paper, the energy buffer takes the form of an induction
machine feeding a flywheel as shown in Fig. 1. When the dc-link
where is the air density, is the the power coefficient,
voltage decreases, the induction machine is controlled to
is the blade radius, is the blade pitch angle, is the tip speed
operate as a generator, transforming the inertial energy stored
ratio, and is the effective wind speed. Equation (1) shows
in the flywheel into electrical energy supplied to the capacitors.
that small variations in the wind speed produce large changes
When increases, the induction machine motors, transfer-
in the captured power. These power fluctuations propagate to
ring energy from the capacitors to the flywheel. With reference
the output of the wind energy conversion system (WECS), es-
to Fig. 1, the aim is to control the dc-link voltage against fluc-
pecially if the system is fixed speed. For variable-speed systems,
tuations in the generated current and the load current . In
part of the power fluctuation is absorbed as inertial energy in the
previous work using a structure similar to Fig. 1, scalar
turbine. However, even for variable-speed systems, power fluc-
converters or slow dynamic methods have been used to control
tuations can still be problematic if the WECS is feeding a small
the speed of the machine–flywheel set [3]. However, in such
grid or a stand-alone load [2]. For these applications, the wind
a drive, the machine torque is not controlled directly and this
turbine is augmented by an additional source, usually a diesel
results in slow dynamics and suboptimal voltage regulation. In
generator [3]. In such hybrid systems, wind speed fluctuations
[4], a vector-controlled induction machine, driving a flywheel,
not only produce fluctuations in the generator output voltage,
is used for power smoothing. However, no formal analysis of
but also an unacceptable number of start/stop cycles of the diesel
the dynamic of the system is presented, the controller designed
generator if a temporary energy buffer is not available.
is not discussed, and feedforward compensation is not consid-
ered.
Manuscript received May 9, 2000; revised November 26, 2000. Abstract pub- Although a speed sensor will be used in this paper, this is not
lished on the Internet February 15, 2001.This work was supported by Fondecyt required in practice since sensorless techniques having the same
Chile under Contract 1980689 and the British Council.
R. Cárdenas and R. Peña are with the Electrical Engineering Department, torque dynamics as a sensored drive are well known [5], [6] and
University of Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile (e-mail: [email protected]). the flywheel will not be required to operate at zero speed.
G. Asher and J. Clare are with the Electrical and Electronics Engineering This paper addresses the nonlinear control problem of regu-
Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K. (e-mail:
[email protected]). lating using the current providing the analysis and inves-
Publisher Item Identifier S 0278-0046(01)03383-4. tigating the controller design. It is further shown that the regu-
0278–0046/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
626 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO. 3, JUNE 2001

Fig. 2. Proposed control system.

lation may be improved drastically by exploiting knowledge of where represents the inverter and iron power losses (the
the “disturbance currents” and and using this knowledge coefficient arises from the 2–3 axes scaling), represents
in a novel feedforward technique. Experimental results from a the generation connected to the dc link, e.g., the wind turbine,
2.5-kW prototype are presented, with and without compensa- is the total capacitance of the dc link, and is the load.
tion, which show the effectiveness of the proposed control struc- Using the machine parameters and assuming rotor-flux ori-
ture. entation [7], , , , and are given by

II. PROPOSED CONTROL STRUCTURE (3)

Fig. 2 shows the vector control structure including dc-link
voltage regulation. It is based on a standard indirect-rotor-flux- (4)
orientated (IRFO) [7] control of the induction machine driving
the flywheel. The current and voltage values are referred to where are the stator and rotor resistance, respectively,
the reference frame aligned to the rotor flux and take dc values is the magnetizing inductance, is the the rotor inductance,
in steady state. The demand sets the machine flux level which is the rotor flux, and is the overall leakage coefficient.
is here defined constant so that the drive is rated for operation Using (2)–(4), it can be shown that the power balance can be de-
below base speed and is able to develop full torque. In general, rived as (5), shown at the bottom of the next page, where is
the flywheel will run at high speed and field weakening may be the flywheel speed (in electrical radians per second). We can lin-
appropriate; it is noted, however, that at higher speeds, a given earize (5) about the reference , assuming that and are
amount of power can be extracted with less change in speed and constant (because of the large flywheel inertia). The linearised
hence less torque. The proposed techniques are, thus, equally transfer function between the dc-link voltage and (neglecting
valid for field-weakening operation. The torque current refer- ) is then obtained from (5) as
ence is derived from the controller. Note that the PI con-
trollers for the , current loops are designed for a current
and, hence, torque rise time of between 1–5 ms. In general, the
IRFO scheme of this paper is augmented by a rotor resistance
estimation scheme, e.g., [7], in order to maintain good field ori-
entation under thermally induced rotor resistance changes; for
simplicity, this is not described.

A. Small-Signal Model (6)

To obtain a relationship between the dc-link voltage and the
current the power balance is used. The power balance between Equation (6) may be used to design a linearized controller. How-
the dc-link side and the induction machine side is (see Fig. 1) ever, (5) is strongly nonlinear. The zero of (6) will depend on the
flywheel speed, the flywheel torque, and the induction motor
field level, while the pole of (6) depends on the disturbance cur-
(2)
rent ( ). Given the variation of (6) over the operational
CÁRDENAS et al.: CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCED POWER SMOOTHING IN WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS 627

range of the flywheel, a fixed classical-type controller is inap- A. Simplified Compensation

propriate. The approach taken in this paper is to derive a feed- A simpler expression for the feedforward term may be ob-
forward compensation technique augmented by a fuzzy-imple- tained by neglecting the losses in (7). The torque current then
mented nonlinear controller. This is considered below. becomes

III. FEEDFORWARD COMPENSATION

(9)
The principle of feedforward compensation is based on the
parametric model of the machine and converter and relates the
Equation (9) produces an error in the dc-link current sup-
fluctuation current ( ) to . Since the flywheel inertia will
plied/consumed by the induction machine of
be large (the speed dynamics will be slow), and neglecting the
variation in the energy stored in , , then the steady-state
system equations may be used; effectively, the compensation
supplies a steady-state value of dependent on the fluctua- (10)
tion disturbance. Using (5), the steady-state power balance is
obtained as Using the parameters of the 2.5-kW prototype (see the Ap-
pendix) and (10), the error, for our prototype, con-
sidering nominal current is approximately 0.11 pu.
When the simplified compensation is used, a variable limiter
for should be considered. This limits to the value that pro-
duces maximum transfer of power from the flywheel inertia to
the capacitors. This value is obtained by maximizing the power
(7)
of the induction machine [see (7)] with respect to to yield
Using (7), the steady-state torque current is obtained as shown
in (8) at the bottom of the page, where the root is taken
(11)
corresponding to the normal motoring or generating condition
depending (if the losses are neglected) on the sign of ( ).
The root corresponds to very high values of covering
the unlikely condition in which the machine copper losses could For a typical induction motor, this value is below nominal
dominate the system power (e.g., for both the dc-link for operation in the region pu, reflecting the fact that
and flywheel energy are dissipated as copper losses). machine copper losses play an important role in the maximum
Based on (8), two schemes for feedforward compensation are power transfer at low speed. It is noted that the limit is only
presented below. The first scheme is derived from (7), and it applicable during generation (extraction of energy from the fly-
is called “simplified compensation” in this paper. The second wheel) since the energy supplies both the machine losses and
scheme for feedforward compensation considers a lookup table the capacitative energy. During motoring, energy from the ca-
implementation of (8), and it is called “exact compensation” in pacitors supplies the machine losses so that the limit described
this paper. by (11) is not applicable.

(5)

(8)
628 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO. 3, JUNE 2001

on (especially at high speed). Therefore, even if the fluctua-

tions on ( ) are not considered, the control structure shown
in Fig. 3 has significant advantages over a fixed gain controller
which, without the nonlinear gain, can hardly give uniformly
good performance over the speed range. Hence, only the struc-
tures considered in Fig. 3 are considered.
It can be seen that the computation of from (9) or (12) is a
function of the machine parameters. Since, in a typical induction
machine, the copper losses are relatively small and considering
that the induction machine–flywheel system is not designed to
operate at very low speeds the sensitivity to the machine resis-
tances can be ignored. The main parameter dependence is that of
[see (7)] which is constant and adequately known
Fig. 3. Proposed control structure. (a) Control system with gain compensation. below base speed. The variation of under field weakening
(b) Control system with feedforward and gain compensation. is noted, however, and steps may be necessary to compensate
(e.g., via a versus lookup table) for the variation.
B. Exact Compensation
Equation (8) can be rewritten as D. Nonlinear Control Implementation
It was seen in Section II-A that the numerator of (6) was
a function of rotational speed, while the pole is dependent on
( ). The variation of the numerator is compensated by the
nonlinear gain structure of Fig. 3. For the variable denominator
in (6), it is assumed that ( ) can be treated as a measurable
disturbance. Hence, (6) may be regarded as nonlinear determin-
istic plant and a variable classical controller is possible. One
(12)
possible approach is to design a series classical controllers over
a number of (linearized) operating points and then use a fuzzy
where , , and are dependent on the machine parameters. An interpolation in the manner of [14]. Alternatively, a technique
even simpler expression may be obtained considering operation such as internal model control (IMC) [15] may be used to de-
below base speed, which implies constant , and replacing rive a continuously variable controller as a function of the mea-
by . sured ( ). It is noted, however, that (6) may be open-loop
The value of can be unstable and care must be taken in applying IMC in such cases
calculated using a lookup table. For between to [15].
[see (11)] a lookup table with values between to is nec- In this paper, a simple fuzzy controller equivalent to a
essary. However, if motoring at very low speed is considered, a nonlinear PI structure is designed. For a closed-loop response
larger lookup table is required. in the region of 30 rad s , the numerical parameters of
It follows from (12) that the variable limiter given by (11) the rig and the disturbance currents are such that the pole
is not necessary when exact compensation is used, and it should variation of (6) is not large and good results are obtained with
be replaced by a fixed limiter. regular memberships for the error and change of error (see
Fig. 4). For systems of higher rating, a nonlinear fuzzifica-
C. Control System and Feedforward Compensation. tion of the inputs may be appropriate. For the fuzzy sets at
Either (9) or (12) may be used in two ways. First, the expres- the output, a simple implementation in which the output is
sions provide a nonlinear gain which may be affixed in series fuzzified to reflect the operating disturbance is appropriate
with a fuzzy controller as shown in Fig. 3(a). Note that (6) is and this correspond to a variable PI gain. A fuzzy controller
a function of ( ) so that, in principle, the nonlinear con- was thus designed using three membership functions for the
troller should be a function of ( ). However, the structure error ( ) and five membership functions for its
of Fig. 3(a) avoids this by defining ( as the output of a derivative, i.e., ( ). The output of the
fuzzy controller and using (9) or (12) as a nonlinear gain com- controller (( ) has seven sets for , i.e.,
pensation. Secondly, (9) or (12) may act directly on the feedfor- and . The height defuzzifica-
ward signal ( ) as shown in Fig. 3(b). In this structure, the tion method is used in this controller. Fig. 4(a)–(c) shows the
value of ( ) is fed forward to the output of the fuzzy con- normalized membership functions for , and ,
troller which itself provides only the dynamic adjustment due respectively. The membership values, obtained by a guided
to the steady-state nature (and parameter errors) of (9) or (12). search algorithm [10], correspond to a nominal PI controller of
Fig. 3(b) also contains the variable limiter for which should /s giving a closed loop response of rad s
be considered when (9) is used. and at a zero disturbance linearized operating point
A controller without the nonlinear gain implementation is not (see the Appendix). Table I shows the fuzzy rule matrix for
considered in this paper. Since the values of , and this controller. The fuzzy output is integrated to
are relatively small, the numerator of (6) is strongly dependent achieve the integral action required. The performance of the
CÁRDENAS et al.: CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCED POWER SMOOTHING IN WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS 629

TABLE I
RULE MATRIX FOR THE FUZZY CONTROLLER

in the Appendix. A 10 000-line incremental encoder provides

the flywheel speed. For all the results shown in this section,
“without feedforward compensation” refers to the structure of
Fig. 3(a) [using (12)], while “with compensation” refers to that
of Fig. 3(b). The demanded dc-link voltage is 650 V.
Fig. 6 shows the response of the fuzzy control system to a
load step of 1.1 A (45% full load at 950 r/min). The load is
applied at s and disconnected at s. Without using
feedforward compensation [see Fig. 6(a)] the voltage dip is 18 V
when the load is connected and the overshoot is 15 V when the
load is disconnected. Fig. 6(b) and (c) shows the response of the
control system for the exact (12) and simplified compensation
(9), respectively. Both responses are similar with a voltage dip
of approximately 3 V and overshoot of 2 V for load connection
and disconnection, respectively. Similar responses for the exact
and simplified feedforward compensations were expected in this
case since the load impact was relatively small and the copper
losses produced by are negligible.
Fig. 7(a)–(d) shows the control system response for a load
step of 0–2.7 A, (about 110% of the nominal power at 950
r/min). Fig. 7(a) shows the control system response for the fuzzy
controller without feedforward compensation. The voltage vari-
ation is large, with a dip of 43 V and an overshoot of 43 V for
load connection and disconnection respectively (representing
7% of the nominal dc voltage). Fig. 7(b) and (c) shows the re-
sponse of the control system for the exact and simplified com-
pensation respectively. When the exact compensation is used,
Fig. 4. Membership functions of the voltage controller. (a) Error. (b) Change
in error. (c) Change in control output. the voltage dip and overshoot are reduced to 6.7 and 4.4 V,
respectively for load connection and disconnection. When the
simplified compensation is used the voltage dip and overshoot
controller in comparison with the nominal PI at the designed
are approximately 10 and 8.5 V, respectively. There is also a
operating point is discussed in Section IV-A.
larger settling time for the simplified compensation because the
( ) current which is not obtained from the feedforward
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS term has to be provided by the relatively slow voltage controller
The control structure of Fig. 3 embedded in the system struc- ( rad s ). A better response is to be expected from the
ture of Fig. 2 has been experimentally tested using a four-pole exact feedforward compensation in this case since for the larger
2.5-kW induction machine. The implementation is shown in load step (110% of nominal) the copper losses produced by
Fig. 5. A parallel T800 transputer network was used. Note that are no longer negligible. However, the response obtained with
processor T2 implements the IRFO vector algorithm and also the simplified feedforward compensation is acceptable and pro-
the control and compensation structures, while processor vides considerable improvement over that without feedforward
T4 acts as an A/D and D/A controller. Two line currents and line compensation.
voltages are measured together with and ( ) which re- Fig. 7(d) shows the magnetizing current and the torque cur-
quires only one extra current transducer. The load ( ) is imple- rent for the conditions corresponding to Fig. 7(b). The control
mented using a chopper feeding a resistive load, while the wind system maintains the magnetizing current constant as shown
turbine is emulated using a current controlled step-up chopper as in Fig. 7(d). When the load is applied, the torque current in-
shown. The parameters of the machine and flywheel are given creases (in the negative sense) since the speed reduces whilst
630 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO. 3, JUNE 2001

Fig. 5. Experimental rig.

Fig. 6. Experimental results showing dc-link voltage regulation to a 45% load step disturbance. (a) Without feedforward compensation. (b) Exact feedforward
compensation. (c) Simplified feedforward compensation.

constant power is being extracted from the dc link. Fig. 8 shows The loads are connected at and disconnected at .
the flywheel speed for loads impacts of 1.1, 1.6, and 2.7 A. The reduction in speed before the transient is due to the fact that
CÁRDENAS et al.: CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCED POWER SMOOTHING IN WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS 631

(d)
Fig. 7. Experimental results showing dc-link voltage regulation to a 110% load step disturbance. (a) Without feedforward compensation. (b) Exact feedforward
compensation. (c) Simplified feedforward compensation. (d) i , i corresponding to (b).

for this test is 0 so that the flywheel speed reduces through

natural friction and also because the flywheel supplies the in-
verter losses. The sudden changes in the rotational speed are due
to mechanical backlash. This backlash also produces a small
ripple in which is attenuated by the dc-link voltage con-
trol with feedforward compensation. Following the load step,
the flywheel continues to coast (since ), again supplying
the friction and inverter losses.
In order to test the system considering generation, a cur-
rent-controlled step-up chopper is connected to the system. This
chopper has a switching frequency of 1 kHz and a maximum
output current of 2.2 A at 650 V. Since the chopper has addi-
tional external capacitance, the effective dc-link capacitance
is increased (see the Appendix). Because of the harmonics
introduced by this chopper a second-order low-pass filter with
a cutoff frequency of 200 Hz is applied to the measurement
of the ( ) current. The performance of the power
smoothing control system has been tested for a wind gust and a
combination of generation from a wind turbine and load steps.
The results are shown in Figs. 9 and 10. Fig. 8. Flywheel speed for several load steps.
632 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO. 3, JUNE 2001

(a) (b)

(c)
Fig. 9. Experimental results showing dc-link voltage regulations to power fluctuations corresponding to real wind gusts. (a) Wind gust and corresponding
generated current i . (b) Regulation and flywheel speed without feedforward compensation. (c) Regulation and torque current with feedforward compensation.

In order to relate the generated wind power with the chopper Fig. 9(a), shows a wind gust selected from a real wind profile
demand current, an ideal wind turbine that extracts the max- and the current (see Fig. 5) corresponding to that wind gust
imum energy from the wind has been assumed. The power gen- [ obtained from (13) and (14)]. The gust has a duration of ap-
erated from such a wind turbine is proximately 6 s. Fig. 9(b) and (c) shows the control system re-
sponse without and with the feedforward compensation term, re-
(13) spectively. Most of the power spectral density (PSD) of the wind
energy is concentrated in the low-frequency region [12], [13].
where is the wind speed and is a constant which de- Therefore, even when the fuzzy controller is designed for
pends, in a real wind turbine, on the wind turbine parameters a relatively low natural frequency of approximately 30 rad s ,
[1], [11]–[13], such as blade profile, blade radius, , etc. the control system performs well with maximum voltage varia-
However, for this ideal wind turbine, is set considering tions of approximately 3 V. Fig. 9(c) shows the response of
the nominal output current of the chopper. From (13), the cur- the control system including feedforward compensation. It is
rent generated by the chopper to the dc link is obtained as only slightly better than the previous response with maximum
voltage variations of approximately 1.5 V. There is almost no
(14) difference between exact and simplified feedforward compensa-
tion, considering the slow variation of the energy supplied from
The ideal wind turbine is equivalent to a real wind turbine with this ideal wind turbine.
zero inertia. If the turbine has no inertia, it is able to follow Fig. 9(b) also shows the flywheel speed . In the first 1.5 s,
instantaneously the optimum operating point for any wind [2], the generated current is not sufficient to cover the friction and
[11]. This ideal wind turbine produces also the highest power inverter losses and some energy is provided to the system by re-
fluctuation for any wind profile since there is no inertia to absorb ducing the flywheel speed. When the generated power increases
part of the wind fluctuations as rotational energy. above the losses, the induction machine motors, absorbing the
CÁRDENAS et al.: CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCED POWER SMOOTHING IN WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS 633

Fig. 10. Experimental results showing dc-link voltage regulation to both generated power fluctuations and load impacts. (a) Wind profile and generated and load
currents. (b) Regulation and flywheel speed without feedforward compensation. (c) Regulation with feedforward compensation. (d) Torque current for (c).

energy supplied into the dc link by the ideal wind turbine. The tion machine reduces its rotational speed until the load is discon-
torque current of the induction machine is shown in Fig. 9(c). nected. Then, the induction machine motors again. Fig. 10(c)
The current in the first 1.5 s is negative because the flywheel shows the performance of the control system considering the
is supplying energy to the dc link. From approximately 1.5 to exact feedforward compensation. Before the load step is ap-
4.2 s, the machine is motoring (positive current). At the end plied, the dc-link voltage has a variation of 1.5 V around the
of the wind gust the induction machine is again supplying en- reference. When the load is connected, the voltage dip is 8 V and
ergy into the dc link. the overshoot is 5.13 V when the load is disconnected. The per-
Fig. 10 shows the control system performance when gener- formance of the feedforward compensation is slightly reduced
ation and load disturbances are combined. The generation is by the low-pass filter applied to the ( ) measurement,
obtained from the ideal wind turbine and a wind profile of 30 but it is still much better than that obtained without considering
s. A load step of 2.1 A is connected to the dc link at approxi- feedforward compensation. Fig. 10(d) shows the torque current
mately and disconnected at approximately . for the conditions corresponding to Fig. 10(c). The current
Fig. 10(a) shows the wind profile, the generated current ( ), is negative during the first part of the wind profile and posi-
and the load current ( ). Fig. 10(b) shows the performance of tive during motoring of the induction machine. When the load
the control system without feedforward compensation. Before is connected, a fast change (because of the feedforward term)
the load step is applied, the dc-link voltage has a variation of ap- from positive to negative is produced in order to supply energy
proximately 3 V around the reference. When the load is con- into the dc link. A fast change in the current is also produced
nected, the voltage dip is 30 V and the overshoot is 28 V when when the load is disconnected.
the load is disconnected. Fig. 10(b) also shows the flywheel
speed. During the first part of the wind profile, speed is reduced, A. Fuzzy versus Linearized Controller
i.e., the induction machine is generating energy into the dc link. The tuning of the fuzzy controller was achieved by using the
When the generated power is above the losses, the induction ma- response of a linearized controller. It is noted here that the fuzzy
chine motors, increasing the rotational speed and absorbing en- controller noticeably outperformed (in terms of maintaining a
ergy from the dc link. When the load step is applied, the induc- required response over a wide range of load or generating con-
634 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 48, NO. 3, JUNE 2001

ditions) a fixed PI controller for the structure of Fig. 3(a) without The linearized controller was designed for the following:
the feedforward compensation. However, with the feedforward
compensation of Fig. 3(b) the improvement shown by the fuzzy V
controller over the PI controller is marginal. This is expected,
since most of the current required to stabilize the dc link voltage r/min
is provided by the feedforward compensation and the controller A
itself provides only the dynamic adjustment due to the steady-
state nature (and parameter errors) of (9) or (12). Because of A
the excellent performance of the feedforward compensation, the A
difference between the fuzzy and a PI controller in the dc-link
regulation is no more than a couple of volts. A

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PARAMETERS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL RIG [15] L. Harnefors and H. P. Nee, “Model based current control of AC ma-
chines using the internal model control method,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Ap-
Squirrel-cage induction machine, star connected, 380 V, 2.5 plicat., vol. 34, pp. 133–141, Jan./Feb. 1998.
kW, 1460 r/min, 5.3 A;

H H Roberto Cárdenas (S’95–M’97) was born in Punta

Arenas, Chile. He received the electrical engineering
H degree from the University of Magallanes, Punta
Arenas, Chile, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees from
the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K., in
1988, 1992, and 1996, respectively.
kg m A (nominal) From 1989 to 1991, he was a Lecturer at the
University of Magallanes. From 1992 to 1995, he
dc-link capacitance 1000 F when the step-up chopper is not was with the Power Electronics, Machines and
connected (Figs. 6–8); Control Group, University of Nottingham. He is cur-
rently with the Electrical Engineering Department,
dc-link capacitance 1500 F when the step-up chopper is con- University of Magallanes. His main interests are control of electrical machines
nected (Figs. 9 and 10). for wind energy applications and variable-speed drives.
CÁRDENAS et al.: CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCED POWER SMOOTHING IN WIND ENERGY SYSTEMS 635

Rubén Peña (S’95–M’97) was born in Coronel, Jon Clare (M’90) was born in Bristol, U.K., in 1957.
Chile. He received the electrical engineering degree He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
from the University of Concepcion, Concepcion, engineering from The University of Bristol, Bristol,
Chile, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the U.K., in 1979 and 1990, respectively.
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K., in From 1984 to 1990, he was a Research Assistant
1984, 1992, and 1996, respectively. and Lecturer at The University of Bristol, involved in
From 1985 to 1991, he was a Lecturer at the teaching and research in power electronic systems.
University of Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile. Since 1990, he has been with the Power Elec-
From 1992 to 1995, he was with the Power Elec- tronics, Machines and Control Group, University
tronics, Machines and Control Group, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K., where he is
of Nottingham. He is currently with the Electrical currently a Senior Lecturer in Power Electronics. His
Engineering Department, University of Magallanes. His main interests are research interests are power electronic converters and modulation strategies,
control of power electronics converters, ac drives, and renewable energy variable-speed drive systems, and electromagnetic compatibility
systems.

Greg Asher (M’98) received the Ph.D. degree in gen-

eral dynamic systems from the University of Bath,
Bath, U.K., in 1979.
For five years, he was a Research Assistant in
electromagnetic modeling and superconducting
systems at the University College of North Wales,
Bangor, U.K., before joining the University of
Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K., as a Lecturer in
1985. He is a presently a Professor in Electrical
Drives and Control at the University of Nottingham,
with research interests in the analysis and control of
electrical drive systems.
Prof. Asher is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS.