Sliding mode controller design for the maximum power point tracking in wind energy systems

In this work, the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) on an autonomous wind energy system with a permanent magnet synchronous generator was studied. The MPPT studies are deal with the efficiency problems in wind energy systems and mainly consist of two parts. One of these parts is a maximum power point tracking algorithm, where the reference value required for the system to operate at maximum power, is generated. Another one is a controller design that will force the system to follow the generated reference value. In this study, different controller designs based on the sliding mode control methods were integrated into the used MPPT methods for enhancing the efficiency of the MPPT methods. Some of these controller designs offered in this work have not been used before for the wind energy conversion systems. In order to evaluate the performance of the MPPT methods with the designed controllers, a wind energy system model, which consist of direct connected permanent magnet synchronous generator, uncontrolled rectifier, dc-dc amplifier type converter and load units, was used. The suggested controller designs have been applied to both the wind energy system model that is created using the simulation program and the experimental system installed in the experimental environment. The obtained results demonstrated that the efficiency of the wind energy system was increased in terms of the fast convergence to the maximum power point and minimum steady state error.