A Low-Cost WECS for Remote Area Electrification

Abstract

The Government of India under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has taken an initiative to electrify remote areas. Though, due to physical terrain, it is difficult and costly to transmit grid power to all remote areas. A stand-alone generation has ample potential to electrify these locations. In this paper, a low-cost stand-alone wind energy conversion system (WECS) has been designed. The objective of the paper is to make a robust system with improved power quality at a low cost. Appropriate generator topology has been selected with field-weakening technique for voltage regulation at above-rated wind speed. At below-rated wind speed voltage boost has been achieved by interchanging coil connections using smart relays. Internet of Things (IoT) technology can be used to establish communication between a sensor and multiple relays of different generators in the wind farm. The hardware implementation of the technique has been done and results have been presented for further analysis © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2024.