High concentrations and fluxes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in fluvial systems are associated with the dark brown water colour familiar in many upland, peat-dominated areas and may indicate a depletion of the terrestrial carbon store. The removal of this colour can also be problematic and expensive for water companies as well as affecting the ecological functioning of the water body through factors such as reduced light penetration through the water column. Disturbance resulting from activities such as land use change can also enhance the loss of carbon and this may manifest itself in elevated concentrations and fluxes of DOC from aquatic systems. This thesis describes and explains patterns of change in DOC quantity and quality from the Crosswater, Crosswater of Luce and Tig catchments draining Arecleoch Forest, a peatland in south Ayrshire, Scotland, from 2008 to 2010. This time period incorporates the installation of a 60-turbine wind farm built and operated by Scottish Power Renewables (SPR). Water samples were collected from Arecleoch at different spatial scales ranging from catchments to soil pore water and temporal scales ranging from daily to seasonally. Concentrations of DOC were measured and fluxes estimated at the catchment scale. DOC concentrations from all three catchments exhibited the well-established seasonal pattern with maxima in late August/early September and minima seen in February/March. The Tig catchment experienced the greatest burden of disturbance from the wind farm development and returned the highest DOC concentrations and fluxes. The Crosswater catchment, used as a control site due to its isolation from wind farm activities, had higher DOC concentrations than the Crosswater of Luce throughout the monitoring period possibly due to a greater proportion of forest cover. ii DOC flux ranged from 35.0 g C m-2 yr-1 from the Crosswater of Luce catchment in 2008 to 55.0 g C m-2 yr-1 from the Crosswater in 2009. The Tig catchment was not monitored for the whole period but returned the highest DOC fluxes of the three catchments between January and June 2010 (15.7 g C m-2). These values are considered high for UK peatlands. It is possible to make a tentative estimate of an extra 12 g C m-2 being exported from the Crosswater of Luce in 2009 that may have been a result of wind farm and/or forestry activities in the catchment. At the sub-catchment scale, “hot spots” of high DOC concentrations (up to 113.4 mg L-1) were found during the final survey of headwater streams inside the development area of the wind farm site during construction in August 2010. Further surveys are recommended to assess whether DOC concentrations have decreased since completion of the wind farm. Daily water samples were collected upstream and downstream of turbine 33 during the excavation of the turbine base. DOC concentrations were higher downstream before work began on the turbine base and although the gap between upstream and downstream DOC concentrations increased over the monitoring period, statistical comparisons of these differences before and after the start of excavation work were not significant at the 95 % confidence level. Challenges arose from the practicability of conducting robust research on a construction site and novel approaches to monitoring DOC were developed. Activity scores were used to quantify the effect of peatland disturbance on DOC concentrations at the catchment scale. The results suggest that this approach may have merit but requires comprehensive site records from the developer. The non-linear nature of the individual wind farm development and forestry activities made it impractical to disentangle the impact of each, particularly for forest harvesting. iii Activity scores could, together with other information gathered from site records, be useful to developers as an indicator of the most likely periods for peat disturbance. Knowledge of the differing disturbance potential of the various activities could also provide useful information to feed into the carbon payback calculator. DOC quality was explored using ultraviolet (UV) absorbance, specific UV absorbance (SUVA) and E4/E6 ratios. The latter metric identified changes in the composition of DOC related to disturbance with water samples from areas draining land subject to disturbance having lower E4/E6 ratios indicating a greater degree of humification of the DOC. This research provides one of only three studies to investigate concentrations and fluxes of DOC in water courses draining land subject to disturbance relating to wind farm construction. It is the only study that incorporates a period of time prior to work beginning and takes in the whole of the development phase. In this respect it provides a valuable addition to our understanding of the way in which peatlands respond to land use change and may provide useful tools to assist developers in minimising the impact of their activities on these valuable carbon stores.

In this dissertation, two high-frequency (HF) transformer isolated single-stage integrated ac-dc converters are proposed for a small scale permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) based wind energy conversion system (WECS). These two types of single-stage integrated ac-dc converters include expected functions of HF isolation, power factor correction (PFC), and output regulation in one single-stage. Fixed-frequency phase-shift control and soft-switching operation are employed in both proposed ac-dc converters. After reviewing the literature and discussing pros and cons of the existing topologies, it is preferred that three identical single-phase single-stage integrated converters with interleaved connection configuration are suitable for the PMSG. For the single-phase converter, two new HF isolated single-stage integrated resonant ac-dc converters with fixed-frequency phase-shift control are proposed. The first proposed circuit is HF isolated single-stage integrated secondary-side controlled ac-dc converter. The other proposed circuit is HF isolated single-stage dual-tank LCL-type series resonant ac-dc converter, which brings better solutions compared to the first converter, such as high power factor and low total harmonic distortion (THD) at the ac input side. Approximate analysis approach and Fourier series methods are used to analyze these two proposed converters. Design examples for each one are given and designed converters are simulated using PSIM simulation package. Two experimental circuits are also built to verify the analysis and simulation. The simulated and experimental results reasonably match the theoretical analysis. Then the proposed HF isolated dual-tank LCL-type series resonant ac-dc converter is used for three-phase interleaved connection in order to satisfy requirements of PMSG based WECS. A design example for this three-phase interleaved configuration is given and simulated for validation under several operating conditions. / Graduate / 0544 / duyimian@uvic.ca

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / Este trabalho apresenta o estudo e desenvolvimento de um sistema eletrÃnico de aproveitamento de energia eÃlica a partir de um gerador sÃncrono de Ãmà permanente conectado a uma turbina de vento. O sistema opera com velocidade variÃvel, permitindo o mÃximo aproveitamento da energia cinÃtica incidente na turbina de vento. Essa energia cinÃtica à convertida em energia elÃtrica pelo gerador sÃncrono de Ãmà permanente e depois de totalmente condicionada, injetada na rede elÃtrica convencional. Esse condicionamento à feito por um sistema eletrÃnico objeto de estudo e desenvolvimento deste trabalho, o qual consiste em um retificador trifÃsico interligado a um inversor monofÃsico em ponte completa com saÃda em corrente. SÃo apresentadas a revisÃo bibliogrÃfica de sistemas de aproveitamento de energia eÃlica para geraÃÃo de energia elÃtrica pertinentes ao escopo do trabalho, a anÃlise do estÃgio retificador (potÃncia e controle), a anÃlise do estÃgio inversor (potÃncia e controle), uma comparaÃÃo teÃrica de rendimento entre o retificador trifÃsico proposto neste trabalho (bridgeless trifÃsico) e o retificador trifÃsico dois nÃveis, e os resultados experimentais de um protÃtipo de validaÃÃo de 5kW do sistema proposto. / This work presents the study and development of an electronic system for wind energy exploitation from a permanent magnet synchronous generator connected to a wind turbine. The system operates with variable speed, allowing maximum use of the kinetic energy incident on the wind turbine. This kinetic energy is converted into electrical energy by the permanent magnet synchronous generator and, after being fully conditioned, injected into the conventional power grid. This conditioning is done by an electronic system object of study and development of this work, which consists of a rectifier connected to a single-phase full-bridge inverter with current output. Are presented the literature review of the relevant wind energy conversion systems to the scope of work, the analysis of the rectifier stage (power and control), the analysis of the inverter stage (power and control), a efficiency theoretical comparison between the proposed rectifier (three-phase bridgeless) and the three-phase fullbridge rectifier, and the experimental results of an 5kW validation prototype of the proposed system.

High penetration of wind energy requires innovations in different areas of power engineering. Methods for improving wind energy and power system interconnection, control, and operation are proposed in this dissertation. A feed-forward transient compensation control scheme is proposed to enhance the low-voltage ride-through capability of wind turbines equipped with doubly fed induction generators. Stator-voltage transient compensation terms are introduced to suppress rotor-current overshoots and torque ripples during grid faults. A dynamic stochastic optimal power flow control scheme is proposed to optimally reroute real-time active and reactive power flow in the presence of high variability and uncertainty. The performance of the proposed power flow control scheme is demonstrated in test power systems with large wind plants. A combined energy-and-reserve wind market scheme is proposed to reduce wind production uncertainty. Variable wind reserve products are created to absorb part of the wind production variation. These fast wind reserve products can then be used to regulate system frequency and improve system security.

With the increasing complexity of the power system, electromechanical oscillations are becoming one of the major problem. Several blackouts have been reported in the past due to insufficient damping of the oscillatory modes. The starting point to avoid catastrophic behaviors would be to simulate actual power system and study the response of the system under various outages leading to blackouts. Recently, it has been identified that appropriate modeling of the load is necessary to match the actual system behavior with the computer simulated response. This research throws some insight into the detailed load modeling and its impact on the system small signal stability. In particular, Composite load model is proposed and its effect on the system small signal stability is investigated. Modeling all the loads in a large power system would be a cumbersome job and hence the method for identifying the most sensitive load location is also proposed in the thesis. The effect of load modeling on the eigenvalue movement is also investigated. The low damped electromechanical modes are always undesirable in the large inter-connected power systems as they might get excited under some event leading to growing oscillations. Proper damping of these modes is essential for effective and reliable system operation. Power system stabilizers have been proved to be an effective way of damping these electromechanical modes. The optimal number and location of PSS to effectively damp the modes via improved Differential algorithm is proposed. Moreover, the effect of TCSC, series compensated FACTs device, on enhancing the system damping is investigated. A fixed order model matching technique is presented to design a damping controller for the TCSC. With the increasing global pressure for reducing carbon emissions, there is a great amount of interest in the renewable sources of energy, particularly Wind Energy Conversion Systems. Of all the present methods of wind generation systems, Doubly Fed Induction Generation (DFIG) based wind farms are gaining popularity. The comparison of various methods of wind generation techniques is presented. In particular, the impact of DFIG based wind farms on the system small signal stability is investigated in this work. Co-ordinated tuning of the controllers is performed using Bacterial Foraging Technique, which is another member of Evolutionary algorithms. Damping controller for the DFIG system is proposed to enhance the damping of the electromechanical modes. Results have proved the effectiveness of the control methodology. The contributions made in this thesis could be utilized to promote the further development of the damping controllers for large power systems.

With the increasing complexity of the power system, electromechanical oscillations are becoming one of the major problem. Several blackouts have been reported in the past due to insufficient damping of the oscillatory modes. The starting point to avoid catastrophic behaviors would be to simulate actual power system and study the response of the system under various outages leading to blackouts. Recently, it has been identified that appropriate modeling of the load is necessary to match the actual system behavior with the computer simulated response. This research throws some insight into the detailed load modeling and its impact on the system small signal stability. In particular, Composite load model is proposed and its effect on the system small signal stability is investigated. Modeling all the loads in a large power system would be a cumbersome job and hence the method for identifying the most sensitive load location is also proposed in the thesis. The effect of load modeling on the eigenvalue movement is also investigated. The low damped electromechanical modes are always undesirable in the large inter-connected power systems as they might get excited under some event leading to growing oscillations. Proper damping of these modes is essential for effective and reliable system operation. Power system stabilizers have been proved to be an effective way of damping these electromechanical modes. The optimal number and location of PSS to effectively damp the modes via improved Differential algorithm is proposed. Moreover, the effect of TCSC, series compensated FACTs device, on enhancing the system damping is investigated. A fixed order model matching technique is presented to design a damping controller for the TCSC. With the increasing global pressure for reducing carbon emissions, there is a great amount of interest in the renewable sources of energy, particularly Wind Energy Conversion Systems. Of all the present methods of wind generation systems, Doubly Fed Induction Generation (DFIG) based wind farms are gaining popularity. The comparison of various methods of wind generation techniques is presented. In particular, the impact of DFIG based wind farms on the system small signal stability is investigated in this work. Co-ordinated tuning of the controllers is performed using Bacterial Foraging Technique, which is another member of Evolutionary algorithms. Damping controller for the DFIG system is proposed to enhance the damping of the electromechanical modes. Results have proved the effectiveness of the control methodology. The contributions made in this thesis could be utilized to promote the further development of the damping controllers for large power systems.

The growing demand for power and increased environmental concerns gave an impetus to the growth of clean and renewable energy sources like wind, solar etc. There is a remarkable increase in the penetration of wind energy systems in the last decade and this trend is bound to increase at a much faster pace in future. This ever increasing penetration of wind power generating systems pose multi-fold challenges related to operational and stability aspects of the grid. Present day wind energy systems mostly comprise of variable speed wind generators. A large fraction of present day variable speed wind turbine generators use doubly fed induction machine (DFIM). This thesis deals with modeling and grid coordination aspects of variable speed wind gener- ators. In particular, the short coming of the existing steady state equivalent circuit of a DFIM is identified and subsequently, an accurate equivalent circuit of a DFIM is proposed. Relevant mathematical basis for the proposed model is presented. The proposed steady state equivalent circuit of a doubly fed induction machine is further validated using dynamic simulations of a standalone machine. Based on the proposed equivalent circuit, two approaches for computing the initial values of state variables of a DFIM is proposed. The first approach is a linear formulation where the losses due to resistance of the stator and rotor windings are neglected. The second approach is a non-linear formulation which takes the losses into consideration. Further, analysis is carried out on grid connected doubly fed induction generators (DFIG). A framework to incorporate DFIG based variable speed wind farms in the steady state power flow analysis is proposed. The proposed framework takes into consideration important aspects such as voltage dependent reactive power limits and mode of reactive power control of associated converters. Some of the challenges in a grid connected DFIG especially during su- persynchronous mode of operation are identified. The advantages of a non-Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) mode of operation under certain operating conditions is highlighted. Finally, aspects pertaining to coordination of grid connected variable speed wind generators are studied. A trust region framework to determine the reference values to the control loops of converters in a variable speed wind generator is proposed. The proposed framework identifies the reference values considering other reactive power controllers in the grid. Moreover, the proposed framework ensures that the steady state voltage stability margin is maximized. On the computational front, trust region algorithms ensure global convergence. The mathematical models and initialization algorithms proposed in this thesis are tested on standalone systems under various control scenarios. The algorithms proposed to incorporate a grid connected DFIG in steady state analysis tools have been tested on a sample 6-bus system and a practical 418-bus equivalent system of Indian southern grid.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The harvested energy of wind can be transferred to the generators either through a gearbox or through an intermediate medium such as hydraulic fluids. In this method, high-pressure hydraulic fluids are utilized to collect the energy of single or multiple wind turbines and transfer it to a central generation unit. In this unit, the mechanical energy of the hydraulic fluid is transformed into electric energy. The prime mover of hydraulic energy transfer unit, the wind turbine, experiences the intermittent characteristics of wind. This energy variation imposes fluctuations on generator outputs and drifts their angular velocity from desired frequencies. Nonlinearities exist in hydraulic wind power transfer and are originated from discrete elements such as check valves, proportional and directional valves, and leakage factors of hydraulic pumps and motors. A thorough understanding of hydraulic wind energy transfer system requires mathematical expression of the system. This can also be used to analyze, design, and predict the behavior of large-scale hydraulic-interconnected wind power plants. This thesis introduces the mathematical modeling and controls of the hydraulic wind energy transfer system. The obtained models of hydraulic energy transfer system are experimentally validated with the results from a prototype. This research is classified into three categories. 1) A complete mathematical model of the hydraulic energy transfer system is illustrated in both ordinary differential equations and state-space representation. 2) An experimental prototype of the energy transfer system is built and used to study the behavior of the system in different operating configurations, and 3) Controllers are designed to address the problems associated with the wind speed fluctuation and reference angular velocity tracking. The mathematical models of hydraulic energy transfer system are also validated with the simulation results from a SimHydraulics Toolbox of MATLAB/Simulink®. The models are also compared with the experimental data from the system prototype. The models provided in this thesis do consider the improved assessment of the hydraulic system operation and efficiency analysis for industrial level wind power application.

Les principaux défis pour le déploiement de systèmes de conversion de l'énergie éolienne est de maximiser la puissance électrique produite, malgré les variations des conditions météorologiques, tout en minimisant les coûts de fabrication et de maintenance du système. L'efficacité de la turbine éolienne est fortement dépendante des perturbations de l'environnement et des paramètres variables du système, tels que la vitesse du vent et l'angle de tangage. Les incertitudes sur le système sont difficiles à modéliser avec précision alors qu'ils affectent sa stabilité.Afin d'assurer un état de fonctionnement optimal, malgré les perturbations, le commande adaptative peut jouer un rôle déterminant. D'autre part, la synthèse de commandes tolérantes aux défauts, capables de maintenir les éoliennes connectées au réseau après la survenance de certains défauts est indispensable pour le bon fonctionnement du réseau. Le travail de cette thèse porte sur la mise en place de lois de commande adaptatives et tolérantes aux défauts appliqués aux systèmes de conversion de l'énergie éolienne. Après un état de l'art, les contributions de la thèse sont :Dans la première partie de la thèse, un modèle incertain non linéaire du système de conversion d'énergie éolienne avec un générateur à induction à double alimentation est proposé. Une nouvelles approches de commande adaptative par mode glissant est synthétisée et ensuite appliquée pour optimiser l'énergie issue de l'éolienne.Dans la deuxième partie, une nouvelle commande par modes glissants tolérante aux défauts et basée sur les modes glissants intégrales est présentée. Puis, cette méthode est appliquée afin de forcer la vitesse de la turbine éolienne à sa valeur optimale en prenant en compte des défauts qui surviennent sur l'actionneur. / The main challenges for the deployment of wind energy conversion systems (WECS) are to maximize the amount of good quality electrical power extracted from wind energy over a significantly wide range of weather conditions and minimize both manufacturing and maintenance costs. Wind turbine's efficiency is highly dependent on environmental disturbances and varying parameters for operating conditions, such as wind speed, pitch angle, tip-speed ratio, sensitive resistor and inductance. Uncertainties on the system are hard to model exactly while it affects the stability of the system. In order to ensure an optimal operating condition, with unknown perturbations, adaptive control can play an important role. On the other hand, a Fault Tolerant Control (FTC) with control allocation that is able to maintain the WECS connected after the occurrence of certain faults can avoid major economic losses. The thesis work concerns the establishment of an adaptive control and fault diagnosis and tolerant control of WECS. After a literature review, the contributions of the thesis are:In the first part of the thesis, a nonlinear uncertain model of the wind energy conversion system with a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) is proposed. A novel Lyapunov-based adaptive Sliding Mode (HOSM) controller is designed to optimize the generated power.In the second part, a new output integral sliding mode methodology for fault tolerant control with control allocation of linear time varying systems is presented. Then, this methodology has been applied in order to force the wind turbine speed to its optimal value the presence of faults in the actuator.

MSc (Statistics) / Department of Statistics / Wind offers an environmentally sustainable energy resource that has seen increasing global adoption in recent years. However, its intermittent, unstable and stochastic nature hampers its representation among other renewable energy sources. This work addresses the forecasting of wind speed, a primary input needed for wind energy generation, using data obtained from the South African Wind Atlas Project. Forecasting is carried out on a two days ahead time horizon. We investigate the predictive performance of artificial neural networks (ANN) trained with Bayesian regularisation, decision trees based stochastic gradient boosting (SGB) and generalised additive models (GAMs). The results of the comparative analysis suggest that ANN displays superior predictive performance based on root mean square error (RMSE). In contrast, SGB shows outperformance in terms of mean average error (MAE) and the related mean average percentage error (MAPE). A further comparison of two forecast combination methods involving the linear and additive quantile regression averaging show the latter forecast combination method as yielding lower prediction accuracy. The additive quantile regression averaging based prediction intervals also show outperformance in terms of validity, reliability, quality and accuracy. Interval combination methods show the median method as better than its pure average counterpart. Point forecasts combination and interval forecasting methods are found to improve forecast performance. / NRF