Grid fault ride through for wind turbine doubly-fed induction generators

EngD ThesisWind farms must contribute to the stability and reliability of the transmission grid, if they are to form a robust component of the electrical network. This includes providing grid support during grid faults, or voltage dips. Transmission system grid codes require wind farms to remain connected during specified voltage dips, and to supply active and reactive power into the network. Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) technology is presently dominant in the growing global market for wind power generation, due to the combination of variable-speed operation and a cost-effective partially-rated power converter. However, the DFIG is sensitive to dips in supply voltage. Without specific protection to 'ride through' grid faults a DFIG risks damage to its power converter due to over-current and/or overvoltage. Conventional converter protection via a sustained period of rotor-crowbar closed-circuit leads to poor power output and sustained suppression of the stator voltages. This thesis presents a detailed understanding of wind turbine DFIG grid fault response, including flux linkage behaviour and magnetic drag effects. A flexible 7.5kW test facility is used to validate the description of fault response and evaluate techniques for improving fault ride-through performance. A minimum threshold rotor crowbar method is presented, successfully diverting transient over-currents and restoring good power control within 45ms of both fault initiation and clearance. Crowbar application periods were reduced to 11-16ms. A study of the maximum crowbar resistance suggests that this method can be used with high-power DFIG turbines. Alternatively, a DC-link brake method is shown to protect the power converter and quench the transient rotor currents, allowing control to be resumed; albeit requiring 100ms to restore good control. A VAr-support control scheme reveals a 14% stator voltage increase in fault tests: reducing the step-voltage impact at fault clearance and potentially assisting the fault response of other local equipment.EPSR

Wind Energy Management

The book "Wind Energy Management" is a required part of pursuing research work in the field of Renewable Energy at most universities. It provides in-depth knowledge to the subject for the beginners and stimulates further interest in the topic. The salient features of this book include: - Strong coverage of key topics - User friendly and accessible presentation to make learning interesting as much as possible - Its approach is explanatory and language is lucid and communicable - Recent research papers are incorporate

Grid fault ride through for wind turbine doubly-fed induction generators

Wind farms must contribute to the stability and reliability of the transmission grid, if they are to form a robust component of the electrical network. This includes providing grid support during grid faults, or voltage dips. Transmission system grid codes require wind farms to remain connected during specified voltage dips, and to supply active and reactive power into the network. Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) technology is presently dominant in the growing global market for wind power generation, due to the combination of variable-speed operation and a cost-effective partially-rated power converter. However, the DFIG is sensitive to dips in supply voltage. Without specific protection to 'ride through' grid faults a DFIG risks damage to its power converter due to over-current and/or overvoltage. Conventional converter protection via a sustained period of rotor-crowbar closed-circuit leads to poor power output and sustained suppression of the stator voltages. This thesis presents a detailed understanding of wind turbine DFIG grid fault response, including flux linkage behaviour and magnetic drag effects. A flexible 7.5kW test facility is used to validate the description of fault response and evaluate techniques for improving fault ride-through performance. A minimum threshold rotor crowbar method is presented, successfully diverting transient over-currents and restoring good power control within 45ms of both fault initiation and clearance. Crowbar application periods were reduced to 11-16ms. A study of the maximum crowbar resistance suggests that this method can be used with high-power DFIG turbines. Alternatively, a DC-link brake method is shown to protect the power converter and quench the transient rotor currents, allowing control to be resumed; albeit requiring 100ms to restore good control. A VAr-support control scheme reveals a 14% stator voltage increase in fault tests: reducing the step-voltage impact at fault clearance and potentially assisting the fault response of other local equipment.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEPSRCGBUnited Kingdo

Research on fault detection for three types of wind turbine subsystems using machine learning

2020 by the authors. In wind power generation, one aim of wind turbine control is to maintain it in a safe operational status while achieving cost-effective operation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate new techniques for wind turbine fault detection based on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system data in order to avoid unscheduled shutdowns. The proposed method starts with analyzing and determining the fault indicators corresponding to a failure mode. Three main system failures including generator failure, converter failure and pitch system failure are studied. First, the indicators data corresponding to each of the three key failures are extracted from the SCADA system, and the radar charts are generated. Secondly, the convolutional neural network with ResNet50 as the backbone network is selected, and the fault model is trained using the radar charts to detect the fault and calculate the detection evaluation indices. Thirdly, the support vector machine classifier is trained using the support vector machine method to achieve fault detection. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed radar chart-based methods, support vector regression analysis is also employed to build the fault detection model. By analyzing and comparing the fault detection accuracy among these three methods, it is found that the fault detection accuracy by the models developed using the convolutional neural network is obviously higher than the other two methods applied given the same data condition. Therefore, the newly proposed method for wind turbine fault detection is proved to be more effective

Wind Farm

During the last two decades, increase in electricity demand and environmental concern resulted in fast growth of power production from renewable sources. Wind power is one of the most efficient alternatives. Due to rapid development of wind turbine technology and increasing size of wind farms, wind power plays a significant part in the power production in some countries. However, fundamental differences exist between conventional thermal, hydro, and nuclear generation and wind power, such as different generation systems and the difficulty in controlling the primary movement of a wind turbine, due to the wind and its random fluctuations. These differences are reflected in the specific interaction of wind turbines with the power system. This book addresses a wide variety of issues regarding the integration of wind farms in power systems. The book contains 14 chapters divided into three parts. The first part outlines aspects related to the impact of the wind power generation on the electric system. In the second part, alternatives to mitigate problems of the wind farm integration are presented. Finally, the third part covers issues of modeling and simulation of wind power system

Increasing the capacity of distributed generation in electricity networks by intelligent generator control

The rise of environmental awareness as well as the unstable global fossil fuel market has brought about government initiatives to increase electricity generation from renewable energy sources. These resources tend to be geographically and electrically remote from load centres. Consequently many Distributed Generators (DGs) are expected to be connected to the existing Distribution Networks (DNs), which have high impedance and low X/R ratios. Intermittence and unpredictability of the various types of renewable energy sources can be of time scales of days (hydro) down to seconds (wind, wave). As the time scale becomes smaller, the output of the DG becomes more difficult to accommodate in the DN. With the DGs operating in constant power factor mode, intermittence of the output of the generator combined with the high impedance and low X/R ratios of the DN will cause voltage variations above the statutory limits for quality of supply. This is traditionally mitigated by accepting increased operation of automated network control or network reinforcement. However, due to the distributed nature of RES, automating or reinforcing the DN can be expensive and difficult solutions to implement. The Thesis proposed was that new methods of controlling DG voltage could enable the connection of increased capacities of plant to existing DNs without the need for network management or reinforcement. The work reported here discusses the implications of the increasing capacity of DG in rural distribution networks on steady-state voltage profiles. Two methods of voltage compensation are proposed. The first is a deterministic system that uses a set of rules to intelligently switch between voltage and power factor control modes. This new control algorithm is shown to be able to respond well to slow voltage variations due to load or generation changes. The second method is a fuzzy inference system that adjusts the setpoint of the power factor controller in response to the local voltage. This system can be set to respond to any steady-state voltage variations that will be experienced. Further, control of real power is developed as a supplementary means for voltage regulation in weak rural networks. The algorithms developed in the study are shown to operate with any synchronous or asynchronous generation wherein real and reactive power can be separately controlled. Extensive simulations of typical and real rural systems using synchronous generators (small hydro) and doubly-fed induction generators (wind turbines) have verified that the proposed approaches improve the voltage profile of the distribution network. This demonstrated that the original Thesis was true and that the techniques proposed allow wider operation of greater capacities of DG within the statutory voltage limits

Condition Monitoring System of Wind Turbine Generators

The development and implementation of the condition monitoring systems (CMS) play a significant role in overcoming the number of failures in the wind turbine generators that result from the harsh operation conditions, such as over temperature, particularly when turbines are deployed offshore. In order to increase the reliability of the wind energy industry, monitoring the operation conditions of wind generators is essential to detect the immediate faults rapidly and perform appropriate preventative maintenance. CMS helps to avoid failures, decrease the potential shutdowns while running, reduce the maintenance and operation costs and maintain wind turbines protected. The knowledge of wind turbine generators\u27 faults, such as stator and rotor inter-turn faults, is indispensable to perform the condition monitoring accurately, and assist with maintenance decision making. Many techniques are utilized to avoid the occurrence of failures in wind turbine generators. The majority of the previous techniques that are applied to monitor the wind generator conditions are based on electrical and mechanical concepts and theories. An advanced CMS can be implemented by using a variety of different techniques and methods to confirm the validity of the obtained electrical and mechanical condition monitoring algorithms. This thesis is focused on applying CMS on wind generators due to high temperature by contributing the statistical, thermal, mathematical, and reliability analyses, and mechanical concepts with the electrical methodology, instead of analyzing the electrical signal and frequencies trends only. The newly developed algorithms can be compared with previous condition monitoring methods, which use the electrical approach in order to establish their advantages and limitations. For example, the hazard reliability techniques of wind generators based on CMS are applied to develop a proper maintenance strategy, which aims to extend the system life-time and reduce the potential failures during operation due to high generator temperatures. In addition, the use of some advanced statistical techniques, such as regression models, is proposed to perform a CMS on wind generators. Further, the mechanical and thermal characteristics are employed to diagnose the faults that can occur in wind generators. The rate of change in the generator temperature with respect to the induced electrical torque; for instance is considered as an indicator to the occurrence of faults in the generators. The behavior of the driving torque of the rotating permanent magnet with respect to the permanent magnet temperature can also utilize to indicate the operation condition. The permanent magnet model describes the rotating permanent magnet condition during operation in the normal and abnormal situations. In this context, a set of partial differential equations is devolved for the characterization of the rotations of the permanent. Finally, heat transfer analysis and fluid mechanics methods are employed to develop a suitable CMS on the wind generators by analyzing the operation conditions of the generator\u27s heat exchanger. The proposed methods applied based on real data of different wind turbines, and the obtained results were very convincing

Wind Power

This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers of different fields. A wide verity of research results are merged together to make this book useful for students and researchers who will take contribution for further development of the existing technology. I hope you will enjoy the book, so that my effort to bringing it together for you will be successful. In my capacity, as the Editor of this book, I would like to thanks and appreciate the chapter authors, who ensured the quality of the material as well as submitting their best works. Most of the results presented in to the book have already been published on international journals and appreciated in many international conferences

System Frequency Support of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator-Based Wind Power Plant

With ever-increasing penetration of wind power into modern electric grids all over the world, a trending replacement of conventional synchronous generators by large wind power plants will likely result in the poor overall frequency regulation performance. On the other hand, permanent magnet synchronous generator wind Turbine System (PMSG-WTG) with full power back to back converters tends to become one of the most promising wind turbine technologies thanks to various advantages. It possesses a significant amount of kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of turbine blades, which can be utilized to enhance the total inertia of power system. Additionally, the deloaded operation and decoupled control of active and reactive power make it possible for PMSG-WTG to provide a fast frequency regulation through full-power converter. First of all, a comprehensive and in-depth survey is conducted to analyze the motivations for incorporating the inertial response and frequency regulation of VSWT into the system frequency regulation. Besides, control classifications, fundamental control concepts and advanced control schemes implemented for auxiliary frequency support of individual WT or wind power plant are elaborated along with a comparison of the potential frequency regulation capabilities of four major types of WTs. Secondly, a Controls Advanced Research Turbine2-Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator wind turbine (CART2-PMSG) integrated model representing the typical configuration and operation characteristics of PMSG-WT is established in Matlab/Simulink,. Meanwhile, two different rotor-side converter control schemes, including rotor speed-based control and active power-based control, are integrated into this CART2-PMSG integrated model to perform Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) operation over a wide range of wind speeds, respectively. Thirdly, a novel comprehensive frequency regulation (CFR) control scheme is developed and implemented into the CART2-PMSG model based on rotor speed control. The proposed control scheme is achieved through the coordinated control between rotor speed and modified pitch angle in accordance with different specified wind speed modes. Fourth, an improved inertial control method based on the maximum power point tracking operation curve is introduced to boost the overall frequency support capability of PMSG-WTGs based on rotor speed control. Fifth, a novel control method based on the torque limit (TLC) is proposed for the purpose of maximizing the wind turbine (WT)\u27s inertial response. To avoid the SFD caused by the deloaded operation of WT, a small-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) model is established and implemented to eliminate this impact and meanwhile assist the restoration of wind turbine to MPPT mode by means of coordinated control strategy between BESS and PMSG-WTG. Last but not the least, all three types of control strategies are implemented in the CART2-PMSG integrated model based on rotor speed control or active power control respectively to evaluate their impacts on the wind turbine\u27s structural loads during the frequency regulation process. Simulation results demonstrate that all the proposed methods can enhance the overall frequency regulation performance while imposing very slight negative impact on the major mechanical components of the wind turbine