Frequency Regulation Provided by Doubly Fed Induction Generator Based Variable-Speed Wind Turbines Using Inertial Emulation and Droop Control in Hybrid Wind–Diesel Power Systems

To modernize electrical power systems on isolated islands, countries around the world have increased their interest in combining green energy with conventional power plants. Wind energy (WE) is the most adopted renewable energy source due to its technical readiness, competitive cost, and environmentally friendly characteristics. Despite this, a high penetration of WE in conventional power systems could affect their stability. Moreover, these isolated island power systems face frequency deviation issues when operating in hybrid generation mode. Generally, under contingency or transient conditions for hybrid isolated wind–diesel power systems (WDPSs), it is only the diesel generator that provides inertial support in frequency regulation (FR) because wind turbines are unable to provide inertia themselves. Frequency deviations can exceed the pre-defined grid code limits during severe windy conditions because the diesel generator’s inertial support is not always sufficient. To overcome this issue, we propose a control strategy named emulation inertial and proportional (EI&P) control for Variable-Speed Wind Turbines (VSWTs). VSWTs can also contribute to FR by releasing synthetic inertia during uncertainties. In addition, to enhance the effectiveness and smoothness of the blade pitch angle control of WTs, a pitch compensation (PC) control loop is proposed in this paper. The aim of this study was to provide optimal primary frequency regulations to hybrid wind–diesel power systems (WDPSs). Therefore, the hybrid WDPS on San Cristobal Island was considered in this study. To achieve such goals, we used the above-mentioned proposed controls (EI&P and PC) and optimally tuned them using the Student-Psychology-Based Algorithm (SPBA). The effectiveness of this algorithm is in its ability to provide the best optimum controller gain combinations of the proposed control loops. As a result, the FD in the WDPS on San Cristobal Island was reduced by 1.05 Hz, and other quality indices, such as the integral absolute error (IAE), integral square error (ISE), and controller quality index (Z), were improved by 159.65, 16.75, and 83.80%, respectively. Moreover, the proposed PC control, which was further simplified using exhaustive searches, resulted in a reduction in blade pitch angle control complexity. To validate the results, the proposed approach was tested under different sets of perturbations (sudden loss of wind generator and gradual increase in wind speed and their random behavior). Furthermore, hybrid systems were tested simultaneously under different real-world scenarios, like various sets of load or power imbalances, wind variations, and their combinations. The Simulink results showed a significant improvement in FR support by minimizing frequency deviations during transients.