Direct Fractional-Order Adaptive Control Design for Cascaded Doubly-Fed Induction Generator (CDFIG) in a Wind Energy System

This paper is devoted to a fractional-order model reference adaptive control (FO-MRAC) synthesis for the independent control of the active and reactive power flows in the cascaded doubly fed induction generator (CDFIG) in wind energy systems. The proposed adaptive control law combines a second-order-like fractional reference model and a direct MIT adaptation law using a fractional order integrator. This generator configuration can be an interesting alternative to standard double-output wound rotor induction generators. It is made up of two identical wound rotor induction motors such that their rotors are mechanically and electrically coupled. Using two cascaded induction machines permits the elimination of the brushes and copper rings in the traditional doubly-fed induction generator DFIG, which makes the system more resistant and reduces maintenance costs. In the first step, we propose a classical PI controller synthesis to regulate the active and reactive power produced by CDFIG. Then, the FO-MRAC design is realized and a comparative study based on numerical simulations is performed between the classical regulators PI, MRAC, and FO- MRAC, to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed fractional-order adaptive controller relative to conventional integer order PI and MRAC controllers. These results illustrate the reliability and efficiency of the proposed adaptive control scheme.