This chapter provides an overall perspective of modern wind power systems, including a discussion of major wind turbine concepts and technologies. More specifically, of the various wind turbine designs, pitch-controlled variable speed wind turbines controlled by means of power electronic converters have been considered. Among them, direct-in-line wind turbines with full-scale power converter and using direct-driven permanent magnet synchronous generators have increasingly drawn more interests to wind turbine manufactures due to its advantages over the other variable-speed wind turbines. Based on this issue, major operating characteristics of these devices are thoroughly analyzed and a three-phase grid-connected wind turbine system, incorporating a maximum power point tracker for dynamic active power generation is presented. Moreover, a simplified state-space averaged mathematical model of the wind turbine system is provided. An efficient power conditioning system of the selected wind turbine design and a new three-level control scheme by using concepts of instantaneous power in the synchronous-rotating d-q reference frame in order to simultaneously and independently control active and reactive power flow in the distribution network level are proposed. Dynamic system simulation studies in the MATLAB/Simulink environment is used in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multi-level control approaches in d-q coordinates and the full detailed models presented. The fast response of power electronic devices and the enhanced performance of the proposed control techniques allow taking full advantage of the wind turbine generator.Fil: Molina, Marcelo Gustavo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Energía Eléctrica; ArgentinaFil: Mercado, Pedro Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Energía Eléctrica; Argentin
