Back-to-back Converter Control of Grid-connected Wind Turbine to Mitigate Voltage Drop Caused by Faults

Power electronic converters enable wind turbines, operating at variable speed, to generate electricity more efficiently. Among variable speed operating turbine generators, permanent magnetic synchronous generator (PMSG) has got more attentions due to low cost and maintenance requirements. In addition, the converter in a wind turbine with PMSG decouples the turbine from the power grid, which favors them for grid codes. In this paper, the performance of back-to-back (B2B) converter control of a wind turbine system with PMSG is investigated on a faulty grid. The switching strategy of the grid side converter is designed to improve voltage drop caused by the fault in the grid while the maximum available active power of wind turbine system is injected to the grid and the DC link voltage in the converter is regulated. The methodology of the converter control is elaborated in details and its performance on a sample faulty grid is assessed through simulation

New Adaptive Control Strategy for a Wind Turbine Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG)

Wind energy conversion systems have become a key technology to harvest wind energy worldwide. In permanent magnet synchronous generator-based wind turbine systems, the rotor position is needed for variable speed control and it uses an encoder or a speed sensor. However, these sensors lead to some obstacles, such as additional weight and cost, increased noise, complexity and reliability issues. For these reasons, the development of new sensorless control methods has become critically important for wind turbine generators. This paper aims to develop a new sensorless and adaptive control method for a surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous generator. The proposed method includes a new model reference adaptive system, which is used to estimate the rotor position and speed as an observer. Adaptive control is implemented in the pulse-width modulated current source converter. In the conventional model reference adaptive system, the proportional-integral controller is used in the adaptation mechanism. Moreover, the proportional-integral controller is generally tuned by the trial and error method, which is tedious and inaccurate. In contrast, the proposed method is based on model predictive control which eliminates the use of speed and position sensors and also improves the performance of model reference adaptive control systems. In this paper, the proposed predictive controller is modelled in MATLAB/SIMULINK and validated experimentally on a 6-kW wind turbine generator. Test results prove the effectiveness of the control strategy in terms of energy efficiency and dynamical adaptation to the wind turbine operational conditions. The experimental results also show that the control method has good dynamic response to parameter variations and external disturbances. Therefore, the developed technique will help increase the uptake of permanent magnet synchronous generators and model predictive control methods in the wind power industry

Novel sensorless generator control and grid fault ride-through strategies for variable-speed wind turbines and implementation on a new real-time simulation platform

The usage of MW-size variable-speed wind turbines as sources of energy has increased significantly during the last decade. Advantages over fixed-speed wind turbines include more efficient wind power extraction, reduced grid power fluctuation, and improved grid reactive power support. Two types of typical generation systems for large-size variable-speed wind turbines exist. One is the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) with a partial-scale power electronic converter. The other is the permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) with a full-scale power electronic converter. This research is to develop the model of these two wind turbine systems for real-time simulation, including the complete aerodynamic and mechanical and electrical components. The special focus of this dissertation addresses the mechanical sensorless control of wind generators and grid fault ride-through strategies. In the electrical controller of a DFIG, A mechanical speed sensor is normally required to provide accurate information of the machine speed and rotor position. However, sensorless operation is desirable because the use of a mechanical speed sensor coupled with the machine shaft has several drawbacks in terms of degraded robustness, extra cost and cabling, and difficult maintenance. In this dissertation, design and analysis of a novel sensorless vector controller using a reduced-order state observer is addressed in detail. Results have revealed that the proposed sensorless observer is more robust against parameter variations than other speed estimation schemes. Nowadays, almost all the grid code specifications over the world have included fault ride-through requirements for grid-connected wind turbines. In US, as mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 661-A, wind farms are required to remain online in the presence of severe voltage disturbances as low as 0.0 pu, as measured at the high voltage side of the wind generator step-up transformer, for up to 9 cycles (150 ms). These strict requirements present a significant challenge to the existing wind turbine technologies. In this dissertation, an improved technique combining the traditional crowbar protection circuit and the demagnetizing current injection to ride-through symmetrical grid voltage dips is analyzed and verified for a DFIG-based wind turbine. Also, an improved fault ride-through control strategy without using any extra protection hardware for a PMSG-based wind turbine to mitigate the dc-link overvoltage is developed. In this dissertation, a new real-time simulation platform is developed based on industry standard simulation tools, RTDS and dSPACE. The aforementioned wind turbine models and proposed sensorless controller as well as fault ride-through strategies are all implemented in real-time on this hardware-in-the-loop type of simulation platform. The necessary measures in hardware and software aspects to enable the collaborative simulation of these two industry standard simulators are addressed. Results have shown this integrated real-time simulation platform has broad application prospects in wind turbine controller design and grid interconnection studies

Full- & Reduced-Order State-Space Modeling of Wind Turbine Systems with Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Generator

Wind energy is an integral part of nowadays energy supply and one of the fastest growing sources of electricity in the world today. Accurate models for wind energy conversion systems (WECSs) are of key interest for the analysis and control design of present and future energy systems. Existing control-oriented WECSs models are subject to unstructured simplifications, which have not been discussed in literature so far. Thus, this technical note presents are thorough derivation of a physical state-space model for permanent magnet synchronous generator WECSs. The physical model considers all dynamic effects that significantly influence the system's power output, including the switching of the power electronics. Alternatively, the model is formulated in the $(a,b,c)$- and $(d,q)$-reference frame. Secondly, a complete control and operation management system for the wind regimes II and III and the transition between the regimes is presented. The control takes practical effects such as input saturation and integral windup into account. Thirdly, by a structured model reduction procedure, two state-space models of WECS with reduced complexity are derived: a non-switching model and a non-switching reduced-order model. The validity of the models is illustrated and compared through a numerical simulation study.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure

Synchronverter-based control for wind power

More and more attention has been paid to the energy crisis due to the increasing energy demand from industrial and commercial applications. The utilisation of wind power, which is considered as one of the most promising renewable energy sources, has grown rapidly in the last three decades. In recent years, many power converter techniques have been developed to integrate wind power with the electrical grid. The use of power electronic converters allows for variable speed operation of wind turbines, and enhanced power extraction. This work, which is supported by EPSRC and Nheolis under the DHPA scheme, focuses on the design and analysis of control systems for wind power. In this work, two of the most popular AC-DC-AC topologies with permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSG) have been developed. One consists of an uncontrollable rectifier, a boost converter and an inverter and a current control scheme is proposed to achieve the maximum power point tracking (MPPT). In the control strategy, the output current of the uncontrollable rectifier is controlled by a boost converter according to the current reference, which is determined by a climbing algorithm, to achieve MPPT. The synchronverter technology has been applied to control the inverter for the grid-connection. An experimental setup based on DSP has been designed to implement all the above mentioned experiments. In addition, a synchronverter-based parallel control strategy, which consists of a frequency droop loop and a voltage droop loop to achieve accurate sharing of real power and reactive power respectively, has been further studied. Moreover, a control strategy based on the synchronverter has been presented to force the inverter to have capacitive output impedance, so that the quality of the output voltage is improved. Abstract The other topology consists of a full-scale back-to-back converter, of which the rectifier is controllable. Two control strategies have been proposed to operate a three-phase rectifier to mimic a synchronous motor, following the idea of synchronverters to operate inverters to mimic synchronous generators. In the proposed schemes, the real power extracted from the source and the output voltage are the control variables, respectively, hence they can be employed in different applications. Furthermore, improved control strategies are proposed to self-synchronise with the grid. This does not only improve the performance of the system but also considerably reduces the complexity of the overall controller. All experiments have been implemented on a test rig based on dSPACE to demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed control strategies with unity power factor, sinusoidal currents and good dynamics. Finally, an original control strategy based on the synchronverter technology has been proposed for back-to-back converters in wind power applications to make the whole system behave as a generator-motor-generator system

Modern Control Approaches for a Wind Energy Conversion System based on a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) Fed by a Matrix Converter

This “paper proposes a super-twisting adaptive Control Approaches for a Wind Energy Conversion System Based on a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) Fed by a matrix sliding mode for tracking the maximum power point of wind energy conversion systems using permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs). As the adaptive control algorithm employed retains the robustness properties of classical wind energy conversion system control methods when perturbations and parameter uncertainties are present, it can be considered an effective solution; at the same time, it reduces chattering by adjusting gain and generating second-order adaptive control methods. The Egyptian power system (EPS), a three-zone interconnected microgrid (MG), and a single machine linked to the grid are only a few examples of the power systems for which this article introduces the concept of direct adaptive control (SMIB).The goal of our work is to maximize the captured power by solving a multi-input multi-output tracking control problem. In the presence of variations in stator resistance, stator inductance, and magnetic flux linkage, simulation results are presented using real wind speed data and discussed for the proposed controller and four other sliding mode control solutions for the same problem. The proposed controller achieves the best trade-off between tracking performance and chattering reduction among the five considered solutions: compared to a standard sliding mode control algorithm, it reduces chattering by two to five orders of magnitude, and steadystate errors on PMSG rotor velocity by one order of magnitude”. The purpose of this article is to examine wind turbine control system techniques and controller trends related to permanent magnet synchronous generators. The article presents an overview of the most popular control strategies for PMSG wind power conversion systems. There are several kinds of nonlinear sliding modes, such as direct power, backstepping, and predictive currents. To determine the performance of each control under variable wind conditions, a description of each control is presented, followed by a simulation performed in MATLAB /Simulink. This simulation evaluates the performance of each control in terms of reference tracking, response times, stability, and signal quality. Finally, this work was concluded with a comparison of the four controls to gain a better understanding of their effects. “Moreover, it reduces the above-mentioned steady-state error by four orders of magnitude compared to a previously-proposed linear quadratic regulator based integral sliding mode control law.  A dynamic model is simulated under both variable step and random wind speeds using the DEV-C++ software, and the results are plotted using MATLAB. The obtained results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed controller in spite of the presence of different uncertainties when compared to the classical direct torque control technique

Performance Analysis of a Four-Switch Three-Phase Grid-Side Converter with Modulation Simplification in a Doubly-Fed Induction Generator-Based Wind Turbine (DFIG-WT) with Different External Disturbances

This paper investigates the performance of a fault-tolerant four-switch three-phase (FSTP) grid-side converter (GSC) in a doubly-fed induction generator-based wind turbine (DFIG-WT). The space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique is simplified and unified duty ratios are used for controlling the FSTP GSC. Steady DC-bus voltage, sinusoidal three-phase grid currents and unity power factor are obtained. In addition, the balance of capacitor voltages is accomplished based on the analysis of current flows at the midpoint of DC bus in different operational modes. Besides, external disturbances such as fluctuating wind speed and grid voltage sag are considered to test its fault-tolerant ability. Furthermore, the effects of fluctuating wind speed on the performance of DFIG-WT system are explained according to an approximate expression of the turbine torque. The performance of the proposed FSTP GSC is simulated in Matlab/Simulink 2016a based on a detailed 1.5 MW DFIG-WT Simulink model. Experiments are carried out on a 2 kW platform by using a discrete signal processor (DSP) TMS320F28335 controller to validate the reliability of DFIG-WT for the cases with step change of the stator active power and grid voltage sag, respectively

Improvement in Power Quality of Matrix Converter Interfaced Wind Turbine Emulator

We have seen that the nominal power of single Wind Energy Converter Systems has been steadily growing up and reaching power ratings close to 10 MW. In the power conversion stage, we found that the medium-voltage power converters are replacing the conventional low-voltage back-to-back topology. Due to this reason the Matrix Converters interfaced have appeared as a promising solution for Multi-MW WECSs due to their characteristics such as modularity, reliability and the capability to reach high nominal voltages. In 2009-10, the country imported 159.26 million tons of crude oil which amounts to 80% of its domestic crude oil consumption and 31% of the country\u27s total imports are oil imports. The growth of electricity generation in India has been hindered by domestic coal shortages and as a consequence, India\u27s coal imports for electricity generation increased by 18% in 2010. So in this paper I try to develop fuzzy-logic based control strategy to capture maximum wind energy and reduce harmonics for proposed wind generation system and then develops fuzzy control for indirect matrix converter under steady-state and dynamic conditions. With these assumptions finally try to validate the proposed wind generation system in simulation environment to validate the developed control algorithms under various balanced /unbalanced conditions. Finally evaluate the performance of the developed wind generation system and its controls under various balanced/unbalanced wind conditions. During investigating details the robustness of the steady-state and dynamic performance of the developed system under various balanced/unbalanced conditions using simulation software I presents the experimental performance evaluation of the developed matrix converter prototype with wind emulator. Keywords: Wind energy conversion system (WECS), Matrix converter, Wind emulator, space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM), permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs), wind farms (WFs)

Modeling and Control of a Doubly-Fed Induction Generator for Wind Turbine-Generator Systems

Wind energy plays an increasingly important role in the world because it is friendly to the environment. During the last decades, the concept of a variable-speed wind turbine (WT) has been receiving increasing attention due to the fact that it is more controllable and efficient, and has good power quality. As the demand of controllability of variable speed WTs increases, it is therefore important and necessary to investigate the modeling for wind turbine-generator systems (WTGS) that are capable of accurately simulating the behavior of each component in the WTGS. Therefore, this thesis will provide detailed models of a grid-connected wind turbine system equipped with a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG), which includes the aerodynamic models of the wind turbine, the models of the mechanical transmission system, the DFIG models and the three-phase two-level PWM voltage source converter models. In order to obtain satisfying output power from the WTGS, control strategies are also necessary to be developed based on the previously obtained WTGS models. These control schemes include the grid-side converter control, the generator-side converter control, the maximum power point tracking control and the pitch angle control. The grid-side converter controller is used to keep the DC-link voltage constant and yield a unity power factor looking into the WTGS from the grid-side. The generator-side converter controller has the ability of regulating the torque, active power and reactive power. The maximum power point tracking control is used to provide the reference values for the active power at the stator terminals. The pitch angle control scheme is used to regulate the pitch angle and thus keep the output power at rated value even when the wind speed experiences gusts. Various studies in the literature have reported that two-level converters have several disadvantages compared with three-level converters. Among the disadvantages are high switching losses, high dv/dt, and high total harmonic distortion (THD). Hence, the models and field oriented control schemes for three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converters are also investigated and applied to a WTGS. Besides, an advanced modulation technology, namely, space vector PWM (SVPWM), is also investigated and compared to traditional sinusoidal PWM in a WTGS