Abstract
Over the last few years, improving power extraction from the wind energy conversion system (WECS) under varying wind speeds has become a complex task. The current study presents the optimum maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control approach integrated with neural network (NN)-based rotor speed control and pitch angle control to extract the maximum power from the WECS. So, this study presents a reference model adaptive control (RMAC) for a direct-drive (DD) permanent magnet vernier generator (PMVG)-based WECS under real wind speed conditions. Initially, the RMAC-based rotor speed tracking control is presented with adaptive terms, which tracks a reference model that guarantees the expected exponential decay of rotor speed error trajectory. Then, to reduce the wind speed measurement errors, a recurrent neural network (RNN)-based training model is presented. Moreover, the asymptotic stability of the proposed control method is mathematically proven by Lyapunov theory. In addition, the pitch angle control is presented to efficiently operate the rotor speed within the allowable operating range. Eventually, the proposed control system demonstrates its effectiveness through simulation and experimentation using a prototype of 5 kW DD PMVG-based WECS. After that, the comparative results affirm the superiority of the proposed control method over existing control methods.