1

Abstract Low and medium power wind energy conversion

systems (WECS) are expected to be simple, low cost and reliable.
They are usually implemented with fixed pitch wind turbines. In
such a case, operation with variable speed for increased capture
of wind energy requires a power electronics converter capable of
adjusting the shaft speed. This is done by controlling the active
power drawn from the generator. Permanent magnet
synchronous generators (PMSG) are a good option for low power
variable speed WECS since they do not require external
excitation nor reactive power to operate. Typically, an ac-dc
converter composed of a diode rectifier and a capacitive filter,
connected to a voltage source inverter is used as an interface to a
grid or to a load. The highly distorted input currents of the diode
rectifier with capacitive filters produce additional power losses in
the generator that can reduce its lifetime. This paper discusses
the use of a single-switch three-phase boost rectifier in the front
end of the power electronic interface. It provides means for
regulating the shaft speed by duty cycle variation while reducing
the generator losses when compared to the standard diode and
capacitive filter scheme. Simulation and experimental results
show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme for reducing the
generator copper and core losses and also the internal
temperature.

Keywords Renewable Energy, WECS, Wind Turbine,
PMSG, harmonics, efficiency.
I. INTRODUCTION

Multipoles Permanent magnet synchronous generators
(PMSG) are a good option for low power low cost wind
energy conversion systems (WECS) based on fixed pitch wind
turbines [1]. The absence of moving parts, at the turbine level,
and excitation circuits, at the generator level, should result in a
low-maintenance and a high-reliability system. Synchronous
Machines are usually suitable for small to medium WECS,
being found operating until 4.5 MW systems [2]. However as
long as you increase the power rating of the PMSG, its cost
rise in a higher rate as compared with other generators as it
was presented in [3] for 3 MW WECS.
Operation of the wind turbine with variable speed, for
reducing the mechanical stress and implementing a maximum

Luiz A. C. Lopes and Reinaldo Tonkoski are with Concordia University,
Montreal, QC H3G 1M8 - Canada (e-mails: lalopes@ece,concordia.ca and
tonkoski@ieee.org). Fernando Dos Reis is with Department of Electrical
Engineering, PUCRS, Porto Alegre RS, Brazil (fdosreis@pucrs.br).

power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm, can be achieved with
a power electronic converter at the output of the generator [4,
2]. For most applications, the output power of the WECS
needs to be regulated for supplying an isolated ac load or to
inject power into the distribution grid. Therefore, the power
electronic interface of the WECS should be an ac-ac
converter, capable of: i) controlling the shaft speed by varying
the active power it draws from the generator and ii) regulating
the output voltage and frequency of the WECS.
In order to reduce costs in low power WECS, the input
stage of the power electronics interface is frequently
implemented with a full bridge diode rectifier (FBR) followed
by a capacitive filter [5]. The output stage is usually
implemented with a voltage source inverter (VSI) as shown in
Fig. 1. The VSI is usually voltage controlled (VC-VSI) for
supplying isolated loads [6] or is current controlled (CC-VSI)
when it is connected to the power grid [5, 7, 8]. For interfaces
with a FBR in the front end, the active power drawn from the
generator can be controlled by the back end VSI [5]. One
problem with this approach is that the converter has to operate
with a highly variable dc bus voltage, 0.3 to 1 pu for a
generator speed varying between 0.4 and 1 pu [7]. Therefore,
if the VSI is controlled with sinusoidal pulse-width
modulation (SPWM), its modulation index can become very
low, thus increasing the magnitude of the generated voltage
harmonics and requiring larger ac filters. Alternatively, one
can include a boost rectifier between the FBR and the VSI to
control the power drawn from the generator and also to step-
up the voltage at the input of the VSI [7, 9]. In such a case, the
active power supplied by the VSI is controlled to regulate the
dc bus voltage. One disadvantage of these approaches is that
the input currents of the FBR with a capacitive filter are highly
distorted, resulting in increased losses and higher temperatures
in the generator. This can damage the insulation and reduce
the lifespan of the PMSG [10, 11].
Full-bridge pulse-width modulated (PWM) rectifiers are
used in higher power WECS with squirrel-cage induction
generators [12]. In this case, the use of six force-commutated
switches is justified by the additional requirement of adjusting
the reactive power supplied to the induction generator as the
shaft speed and active power flow vary. On the other hand, for
a PMSG, which does not require any reactive power for active
power generation, a simpler topology such as a single-switch
three-phase boost rectifier (SSBR) can be used. It operates
with unity power factor and can control the active power
drawn from the PMSG, to control the shaft speed and
consequently implement an MPPT algorithm as the one
A Single-Switch Three-Phase Boost Rectifier to
Reduce the Generator Losses in Wind Energy
Conversion Systems
R. Tonkoski, Student Member, IEEE, L. A. C. Lopes, Senior Member, IEEE
and F. Dos Reis, Member, IEEE
2009 IEEE Electrical Power & Energy Conference
978-1-4244-4509-7/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE
2
presented in [13] using a buck converter, however without
unity power factor operation.

Fig. 1. Typical low power wind energy conversion system.
The main objective of this paper is to present the impact of
losses due to current distortion introduced by the utilization of
FBR in WECS and present an implementation alternative to
reduce the current harmonic content in order to reduce the
losses in the PMSG and extend its lifespan. This paper is an
indication of the advantages of using unity power factor
topologies then only diode rectifiers in WECS. The results
were obtained for a 400 VA WECS, however PMSG are used
in a wider range of power [3,1,2]. It is expected that for higher
ratings, the generator would perform similarly to the one
presented just needing to select the most appropriate PFC
topologie considering the WECS power rating.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
modeling of the mechanical part of the WECS, wind turbine
and PMSG, used in the simulation study. Section III presents
the simulated waveforms and harmonic spectra of the
generators output voltage and current when it is connected to
a diode rectifier with a capacitive filter and to the single-
switch three-phase boost rectifier. The power losses of the
generator for both schemes are calculated in Section IV. In
Section V, an experimental setup is implemented to verify the
simulated current waveforms and power losses calculations
and also to provide a measure of the internal temperature of
the PMSG which is hard to calculate analytically. Finally,
conclusions are stated in Section VI.
II. MECHANICAL PART OF THE WECS

The WECS considered in this work consists of a PMSG
driven by a fixed pitch wind turbine, an AC-DC energy
conversion stage implemented using two different approaches
and a CC-VSI. The entire system is shown in Fig. 1. A brief
description of the mechanical part of the system is given
below.
A. Wind turbine model
The output mechanical power of the wind turbine is given
by the usual cube law [14] according to (1). Where C
p
is the
power coefficient, which in turn is a function of tip speed ratio
. The tip speed ratio is defined by, the well known,
equation (2).
1
3
P C AU
m p w
2
= (1)
w
U
m
r
= (2)
Where:
- Air density (kg/m
3
).
C
p
- Power coefficient.
A - Wind turbine rotor swept area (m
2
).
U
w
- Wind speed (m/s).
- Tip-speed ratio.
r - Radius of the rotor (m)

m
- Mechanical angular speed of the generator (rad/s).

The power coefficient is usually provided by the turbine
manufacturer in the form of a set of non-dimensional curves.
The C
p
curve for the wind turbine used in this study is shown
in Fig. 2, where C
pmax
is the maximum power coefficient
developed by the wind turbine at the optimum tip-speed ratio

max
.

Fig 2. Power coefficient vs. tip-speed ratio.
There one sees that if the turbine and PMSG are to operate
with constant speed while the wind speed varies, the wind
turbine will operate with a value of C
p
lower than the
maximum most of the time. In order to draw maximum power
from the wind turbine, the shaft speed has to be varied
according to the wind speed so as to keep the tip-speed ratio at
the optimum value. A simplified equation that describes the
dynamics of the mechanical part of the WECS is
( ) Te Tm
J
1
dt
m
d
= (3)
where (J) is the combined inertia of the rotating masses, T
m
is
the mechanical torque produced by the wind turbine and T
e
is
the electrical torque of the generator. It shows that the shaft
speed can be controlled by varying the electrical torque, or
power, of the generator. For a WECS with a fixed pitch angle,
this can be done by the power electronics converter that
interfaces the generator to an energy storage device, load or to
the power grid [4,12,15]. From the power coefficient curve of
the wind turbine presented in Fig. 2, it is possible to conclude
that the wind turbine can operate at two speeds for the same
power output. In practice, the operating range at region 1 is
unstable as the rotor speed of the WTG belongs to the stall
region. Any decrease in tip speed in this region will cause a
further decrease until the turbine stops. Using the equations
presented in this section, the wind turbine model was
implemented in PSIM

as shown in Fig. 3 in order to simulate

the behavior of the wind turbine.

3

Fig 3. Wind Turbine Model Implemented in PSIM.

III. HARMONIC DISTORTION IN THE OUTPUT OF THE PMSG
This section focuses on the anticipated advantages provided
by the SSBR with respect to the FBR with a capacitive filter,
regarding the reduction of the harmonic content of the stator
current and output voltage of the PMSG. It is worth
mentioning that the use of tuned trap filters is not an
alternative for this application because the PMSG operates
with variable speed and variable frequency. This study was
carried using PSIM

. A model for the wind turbine (Fig. 3)

based on the C
p
versus curve shown in Fig. 2 including the
inertia (J) of the turbine was implemented. For the PMSG, a
voltage type interface PMSG available in PSIM

was used.
The set point chosen for this analysis was with the PMSG
operating at rated speed and power. Under these conditions,
the copper and core losses, as well as the internal temperature
of the machine, are the highest. The main focus in this paper is
the harmonics influence on the WECS. Therefore MPPT,
algorithm was not implemented, although the SSBR presents
the means for controlling the power drawn from the wind
turbine and also for regulating the shaft speed for
implementing MPPT.
A. Three-Phase Diode Rectifier (FBR) with a Capacitive
Filter
The current and voltage waveforms at the stator of the
PMSG when it supplies rated power at rated speed to a FBR
with a capacitive filter are shown in Fig. 4(a) for one of the
phases. The voltages Vb and Vc as well as the currents Ib and
Ic have the same shape but they are delayed 120 degrees. It
may be observed high distortion levels in the voltage and
current waveforms. The voltage waveform distortion is due to
the diode rectifier behavior, imposing this waveform in the
generator. It is important to remark that between the ideal
generator and its terminals there is its output impedance. The
internal voltage waveform of the generator should not be such
waveforms. The harmonic spectrum for the current and
voltage waveforms are shown in Fig. 4(b). The fundamental
components were omitted in Fig. 4(b), in order to better show
the magnitude of the harmonic components. There one sees
that only nontriplen odd harmonics are present, resulting in
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) for current and voltage
equal to 12 % and 27 %, respectively.


(a)

(b)
Fig 4. (a) output current and line-to-neutral voltages with the FBR and
capacitive filter; (b) harmonic spectrum.
B. Three-Phase Single-Switch Boost Rectifier (SSBR)
The topology proposed as the controlled rectifier for the
WECS is shown in Fig. 5 [16]. It is a three-phase single-
switch boost rectifier (SSBR) and operates in the
discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). This converter
presents many advantages such as: Very low THD in the input
current, a simple structure using just one controlled switch and
a simple control strategy that can be easily implemented with
general-purpose PWM integrated circuit (IC) controllers.
Active power control is easily done by duty cycle variation.
This topology requires an additional input filter to remove the
high-frequency harmonic components of the diode bridge
input currents [16, 17]. The size of the input capacitors is
usually set at 0.1 pu while the input inductors L have a small
value, since the converters operates in DCM. The operating
principle of this converter is as follows. When the force-
commutated switch (Q) turns off, the currents in the inductors
L are at the peak values, which are also proportional to the
instantaneous three-phase line-to-neutral voltages. Diode D
1

becomes forward-biased and the inductors discharge on the
DC bus capacitor and load. Since the peak value of the
inductor currents are proportional to the instantaneous value of
the input line-to-neutral voltages, the average values of the
inductors L currents are also approximately proportional to the
input line-to-neutral voltages. Therefore, assuming the
capacitors C_F are small, the fundamental component of the
current in the input of the ac filter should be in phase with the
voltage across the ac capacitor filter.

4

Fig. 5. Single-switch three-phase boost rectifier (SSBR).
The input filter of the SSBR (L
F
, C
F
and L) is calculated
using the design methodology proposed in [16]. For a 35 V
three-phase source supplying 400 W and for a switching
frequency of f
S
= 21 kHz, one obtains: L
F
= 45 H, C
F
= 30 F
and L = 23 H. However, the inductors L
F
were implemented
by the stator inductances of the PMSG which are generally
much larger (L
S
= 2.4 mH) than the calculated L
F
, yielding
negligible harmonic components in the stator windings. These
results were obtained for a duty cycle around 50%, which is
used for the case when the wind speed is rated (12 m/s) and
the PMSG supplies rated power.
The simulated results are presented in Fig. 6 and 7. The
currents at the input of the diode bridge are shown in Fig. 6.
There one sees that the SSBR operates in the DCM and that
the magnitude of the peak values varies in a sinusoidal way,
following the instantaneous values of the source voltages. On
the other hand, these current waveforms present an increased
RMS value that yields increased power losses in the passive
components, diodes and switches of the converter.


Fig. 6. Three-phase bridge rectifier input currents.
The output currents and the phase voltages of the PMSG are
shown in Fig. 7(a). The improvement in the current and
voltage waveforms is clear when compared with those
obtained from the conventional FBR shown in Fig. 4. The
PMSG output voltage and current harmonic spectra are shown
in Fig. 7(b). One can see the presence of triplen harmonics in
both harmonic spectra which appear because the current in the
input of the bridge does not present quarter-wave symmetry.
Nonetheless, the THD of the current of the PMSG is only
4.25%. It is worth mentioning that the switching harmonics
are not shown in Fig. 7(b) but they are computed in the
calculation of the THD.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 7. (a) output currents and phase voltages using the SSBR; (b) harmonic
spectrum.
IV. POWER LOSSES CALCULATONS
This section is dedicated to present how the power losses
were estimated using the simulation results and also suggest
its impact on the generator, which were, after, confirmed by
experimental results. In principle, the power losses of the
machine can be divided into two groups [5]: a) copper losses
and b) core losses. The copper losses (P
CU
) are produced in the
stator winding as function of the RMS current according to
2
a_i
1
P 3 R
Cu a
I
i

=
=

(8)
Where:
I
a_i
- RMS value of the i
th
harmonic component of the
current I
a
.
R
a
- Stator equivalent resistance [5, 18].
The value of R
a
was considered temperature invariant in
these calculations.
The core losses, due to hysteresis and eddy currents, vary
with the magnitude and frequency of the flux variations that
are created by fundamental and harmonic components of the
stator current according to
2 2
i i
1 1
1 1
2 2 2
P P P k f B k f B Weight
e e max max
core h h
V V 1
V V i i i

= =
= + +








(9)
Where:
k
e
- Constant.
k
h
- Constant.
B
max
- Flux density peak value.
f - Rated frequency.
5
W
eight
- Core and copper weight.
P
h
- Power losses due to hysteresis.
P
e
- Power losses due to Eddy currents.
V
1
- Fundamental component of the PMSG line-to-
line output voltage.
i - Harmonic order.
V
i
- Amplitude of the harmonic components of the
PMSG line-to-line output voltage.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of using the SSBR to
reduce the internal temperature of a PMSG, it is imperative to
determine how the harmonic components of voltage and
current affect the power losses in the machine. Therefore, a
comparative analysis of the power losses generated by the
proposed converter, with that of a FBR and capacitive filter
and of a fixed three-phase balanced resistive load was
conducted. The latter was included in the analysis to provide
an ideal case scenario for this specific study, since no
harmonic components are present. The PMSG power losses
for the aforementioned cases, as well as the system losses for
the systems with power converters, were obtained
theoretically using equations (8, 9). The diode bridge and
converter losses were obtained experimentally for the given
load. The results for the PMSG supplying rated values of
voltage and power are presented in Table I.

TABLE I
PMSG losses (W) and efficiency (%).

Copper
Losses
Core
Losses
Frict. &
Windage
Total G Bridge +
Converter
SYS
R Load
78.6 10.2 6 94.8 81.0% 0 -
FBR
101.1 10.9 6 118 76.4% 61 64%
SSBR
84.1 10.3 6 100.4 79.9% 76 65%

From Table I, one sees that when the FBR scheme is used,
the total losses in the PMSG increase by 24 % with respect to
the ideal case (resistive load). This significant additional
power loss results in premature aging and, consequently,
reduction of the PMSG lifetime. On the other hand, the use of
the SSBR allows a 15 % reduction of the total machine losses,
with respect to that of the scheme with the FBR, or a 6 %
increase with respect to that of the ideal case. It is worth
mentioning that the average winding temperature defines the
aging rate for a machine operating under service factor. The
insulation life of standard motor insulation systems doubles in
average for a 10C decrease in temperature [10]. In permanent
magnets (PM), the hysteresis loop shrinks, decreasing the flux
density and weakening the permanent magnet (PM), when the
temperature increases, thus reducing its lifetime [11]. The rate
of lifetime decreases due to temperature rise is:
T F
T
e L L

=
0
(10)
Where, L
T
is the estimation of lifespan in hours due to
temperature rise in the PM, L
0
is the lifespan of the machine
under rated conditions, F is the flux decay per temperature rise
(Wb/C) and T is the temperature rise in degrees Celsius.
This is a very simple equation, however, according to [11], it
permits a close estimation of the temperature effect in the PM
lifetime of the machine. Considering a 10 C temperature
increase, and a flux decay of 0.011 Wb/C, the PM lifetime
would be reduced by 10 %.
The down side of the use of the SSBR scheme is that the
power converter presents increased power losses with respect
to the FBR. However, this is not a significant problem since
this factor can be taken into consideration in the design of the
converter.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The theoretical analysis of the impact of the power losses on
the internal temperature of a PMSG requires a complex
thermal model of the machine. An alternative approach to
quantify the improvements achieved with the SSBR, is to
build an experimental setup and compare the internal
temperature of the PMSG when connected to the SSBR and to
a FBR with a capacitive filter. The machine used in this set-up
was the PMSG of an Enersud E-400

, a 400 W wind turbine.

The power stage of the SSBR used in the experiment is
shown in Fig. 8. It consists of shunt ac filter capacitors, the
boost inductances, a three-phase FBR, the boost converter
switches (Diodes and MOSFETs), an output dc capacitor and
a resistive load. Four parallel MOSFETs (IRFP460) and four
parallel diodes (MUR8100) were used to reduce the
conduction losses in the power circuit. It is worth mentioning
that since the rated voltage of the PMSG WECS is low (35 V
line-to-line) the stator currents, and those circulating through
the static switches are relatively high.

Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of the power stage of the SSBR
The schematic diagram of the circuit used for generating the
gating signals of the SSBR is shown in Fig. 9. It is based on
the LM3524, a dedicated IC broadly employed in SMPS
implementations. For open loop operation, the duty cycle of
the MOSFETS is adjusted at potentiometer POT_H.

Fig. 9. Schematic diagram of the gate signal generator circuit.
A test bench was built as shown in Fig. 10(a). A wind
turbine emulator (WTE) with the characteristics of the
Enersud E-400

propeller was implemented using an 8 poles

induction motor fed by a TOSHIBA VF-S9 three-phase
inverter. The control system of the WTE is implemented in a
PC using the MATLAB-SIMULINK environment connected
to a NI-6052E data acquisition board from national
instruments. Fig. 10(b) shows a block diagram of WTE
control. WTE operation principle is based on the wind turbine
6
rotor dynamics of equation 3, from which by both-side
integration, wind turbine reference shaft speed m* can be
estimated based on the information of mechanical and
electrical torque. Mechanical torque is calculated by software
in SIMULINK using the same model presented in Fig. 3,
adapted for this software. Electrical torque is measured with a
LEBOW 100 Nm rotary torque transducer. The shaft speed
m is measured by an optical encoder Veeder Root of 2500
pulses/rev., and its signal is used by a built-in PI controller on
the inverter to achieve closed-loop control. Therefore, WTE
can emulate shaft speed according to wind turbine and load
characteristics. The wind speed can be varied by software. In
the tests was set at 12 m/s, the rated speed of the Enersud E-
400 WECS.
Three tests were carried out to determine how the harmonic
content of the stator current of the PMSG affects the internal
temperature of the machine. To acquire the three-phase
harmonic data, it was used a Fluke 430 power analyzer, which
is able to measure until the 51
st
harmonic. The initial test was
carried out with a three-phase variable resistive load so that
one can measure the internal temperature of the PMSG when
it delivers rated power with sinusoidal output current. The
resistive load, a three-phase rheostat, was adjusted so that the
PMSG supplies rated power (400 W) at rated frequency (60
Hz). In this case, the output voltage and current waveforms,
not shown, are sinusoids. The second test was conducted with
the PMSG connected to a FBR with a bulky (30 mF) filter
capacitor and a variable resistive load. The load resistor was
adjusted at 4.56 so that the PMSG supplies 400 W. The
output current and voltage waveforms of the PMSG are shown
in Fig. 11(a) while their harmonic spectra are presented in Fig.
11(b). The results are consistent with those obtained from the
simulations despite the presence of small triplen harmonics.
The final test was carried out with the SSBR. The values of
the components used in this set-up, shown in Fig. 8, were
calculated as described in Section III.B. The converter
operates with a duty cycle of 50% that corresponds to the
maximum power produced by the PMSG at rated wind speed
when the dc bus voltage is around 200 V and the equivalent
load resistor is 125 . The input current of the rectifier bridge
and the output current and voltage waveforms of the PMSG
are shown in Fig. 12 to 14. The harmonic spectra are presented
in Fig. 14(b). There one can see the presence of small triplen
harmonics, like in the simulation results.
Table II presents the measurements obtained from the
experiments. The temperature in the PMSG was obtained after
stabilization (10 min for all three tests). The values presented
in Table II are the averages of the measurements taken in five
different places in the surface of the generator.


(a)

(b)
Fig. 10. Wind Turbine Emulator: (a) Inverter and induction motor of the WTE
and the PMSG of the Enersud E-400 WECS and (b) control system.


(a)

(b)
Fig. 11. (a)Current and voltage of phase A of the PMSG and its (b) Harmonic
Spectra.

Fig. 12. Current in the boost inductor.
7

Fig. 13. PMSG current with the SSBR.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 14. (a)Voltage and current in the PMSG with the SSBR and its (b)
harmonic spectra.
TABLE II
Data obtained from the tests
R FBR SSBR
PMSG Temperature 37.00 42.00 41.00 C
Test Room Temperature 27.80 28.00 31.00 C
Temperature Rise 9.2 14 10 C
Mechanical Power 501.00 535.00 502.00 W
Real Power 400.00 400.00 400.00 W
Apparent Power 400.12 420.00 403.00 VA
Load Power - 337 326 W
DC Bus Voltage - 39.2 202.4 V
Power Factor 1.00 0.94 0.99
PMSG Efficiency G 79.8 74.8 79.7 %
System Efficiency SYS - 63.0 64.9 %

By comparing the values presented in Table II, one sees that
the use of the SSBR, with its unit power factor input current,
allowed the PMSG to operate with an efficiency of 79.7 %.
This value is similar to that of a resistive load (79.8 %) and is
higher than that when the generator is connected to a FBR
with a capacitive filter (74.8 %). As a result of the reduced
power losses, the temperature rises caused by the SSBR with
respect to the ambient temperature (10 C) was lower than that
of the FBR (14 C). Therefore, one concludes that the use of
the SSBR should result in an extended lifetime for the PMSG
with respect to that of a system with a FBR. On the other
hand, the increased value of the RMS current in the input of
the rectifier bridge of the SSBR, due to operation in DCM,
increases the power losses in the converter, thus reducing its
efficiency. Nonetheless, this should not be a major problem
since the power electronic converter can be easily designed to
cope with this. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the system
efficiency, output load power to input mechanical power, of
the scheme that employs the SSBR is still higher than that
with a FBR. Another noticeable advantage of the SSBR is that
its output voltage is high enough (~ 200 V) to be connected
directly to a transformerless voltage source inverter capable of
outputting 120V.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has discussed a way to reduce the internal
temperature of the permanent magnet synchronous generator
(PMSG) reducing the harmonic content of its output current
and voltage and also increasing its efficiency suggesting an
increase in its lifespan. It has been shown that the use of a
unity power factor ac-dc converter instead of a simple diode
rectifier, which is commonly used in low power wind energy
conversion systems, should be able to reduce the overall
harmonic content and consequently to extend the lifetime of
the PMSG. The overall efficiency were not considerably
affected, since the introduction of the boost converter added
losses to the system, but these losses were actually relocated
from the generator, since it was reduced its copper and iron
losses, which reduced the temperature of the generator,
leading to increase the lifespan of the generator in comparison
with the usual topology. Cost factors prevent the use of 6-
switch boost PWM ac-dc converters working in continuous
conduction mode. Usually this topology is used for higher
power WECS mostly with induction generators operating with
variable speed. In fact, since the PMSG does not require
variable reactive power for operating with variable speed, a
simple single-switch three-phase boost rectifier (SSBR) can be
used. Other topologies may also be used in the place of the
SSBR as the ones derived from Cuk, Sepic and Zeta
converters. Maximum power point tracking (MPPT)
algorithms can be implemented by controlling the duty cycle
of a single switch. The power electronics interface of the
WECS can operate with a constant dc bus voltage. What is
more, the output voltage of the SSBR is typically high,
allowing the low-voltage low-power PMSG to be connected to
a distribution grid without any further voltage boost devices.
VII. REFERENCES

[1] Y. Chen, P.Pillay and A. Khan, PM wind generator topologies, IEEE
Trans. on Industry Applications, Vol. 41, Issue 6, pp. 1619 - 1626, Dec.
2005.
[2] E. Spooner, P. Gordon, J.R. Bumby and C.D. French, Lightweight
ironless-stator PM generators for direct-drive wind turbines, IEE
Proceedings Electric Power Applications, Vol. 152, Issue 1, pp. 17 - 26,
Jan. 2005.
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