Professional Documents
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5, MAY 2011
1501
Fault-Ride-Through Capability of
Oscillating-Water-Column-Based
Wave-Power-Generation Plants Equipped With
Doubly Fed Induction Generator and Airflow Control
Mikel Alberdi, Modesto Amundarain, Aitor J. Garrido, Member, IEEE,
Izaskun Garrido, Member, IEEE, and Francisco Javier Maseda
b, l
Blade height, blade chord length.
n, K
Number of blades, turbine constant.
q,
Flow rate, flow coefficient.
Wavelength, wave period.
, Tw
h, A
Water depth, wave height.
Wave group velocity, inertia of the system.
Cg , J
, T
Angular velocity, torque.
Ca, Ct
Power and torque coefficients.
R, L,
Resistance, inductance, flux.
V , I, F
Voltage, current, frequency.
P, Q
Active and reactive power.
Subscripts
d, q
Direct and quadrature components.
t, g, m Turbine, generator, magnetizing.
gr, s, r Grid, stator, and rotor side.
N OMENCLATURE
Pwf , Pin
Ed , g
vx , dp
, w
a, r
Manuscript received January 25, 2010; revised May 26, 2010 and August 18,
2010; accepted September 20, 2010. Date of publication November 9, 2010;
date of current version April 13, 2011. This work was supported in part by the
Science and Innovation Council MICINN through Research Projects ENE200907200 and ENE2010-18345, by the UE FP7 EFDA under Task WP09-DIA02-01 WP III-2-c, and by the Basque Government through Research Projects
S-PE08UN15 and S-PE09UN14.
The authors are with the Department of Automatic Control and Systems
Engineering, University of the Basque Country, 48012 Bilbao, Spain (e-mail:
mikel.alberdi@ehu.es; molty.amundarain@ehu.es; aitor.garrido@ehu.es;
izaskun.garrido@ehu.es; fcjavier.maseda@ehu.es).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2010.2090831
I. I NTRODUCTION
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Fig. 1.
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
Fig. 2.
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g Tw2
tanh(2 h/).
2
(2)
B. OWC System
As shown schematically in Fig. 2, OWC is basically a
device that converts the hydraulic energy of the waves into
an oscillating airflow. The principal component of an OWC is
the capture chamber, which is composed of a fixed structure
with its bottom open to the sea. The wave motion alternately
compresses and decompresses the air above the water level
inside the chamber. A conical duct is erected at the top of
the chamber with the power-takeoff system, consisting of the
turbine and the generator, located within this duct [10], [11].
The OWC energy equations are similar to those used for wind
turbines. In this way, the power available from the airflow in
the OWC chamber may be expressed as (3), where it can be
noted that the airflow kinetic-energy term vx3 a/2 is common
to wind-turbine analysis, whereas the air-pressure term dpvx a
is a representative term to this application. From (3), it can be
observed that the size of the duct and the airflow through the
duct play a significant role in the OWC system design. For a
complete description, see [11]
(3)
Pin = dp + vx2 /2 vx a.
C. Wells-Turbine Description
The Wells turbine is a specially designed axial-flow turbine
that converts an oscillating flow into a unidirectional rotary
motion for driving an electrical generator. That is, it always
rotates in the same direction both for inbound and outbound
(4)
(5)
(6)
= vx /(r r )
(7)
q = vx a
(8)
K = b l n/2.
(9)
(10)
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long period of time (several wave periods), present approximately the same magnitude.
D. Technical Connection Requirements to Power Grids
The main requirements to be met by power-generation plants
of medium and high capacity, as in the case of wind farms
or wave-energy converters, to be able to operate within the
electricity market on equal conditions with conventional power
plants are established as follows: controllability of the active
power, controllability of the reactive power, and FRT capability
during voltage drops in the transmission system (see [18]).
1) Active-Power Control: The mismatch between the generated and consumed active powers in the network may cause
dangerous changes in the frequency of the grid. In particular, if
power-production plants were disconnected when a grid fault
occurs on the transmission system, it may contribute to the
voltage dip. Therefore, this actuation is not allowed.
2) Reactive-Power Control: The voltage regulation of the
grid is essential in electricity supply since a mismatch between
generated and consumed reactive power would cause dangerous
variations in the grid voltage. If the supply of reactive power is
less than the demanded one, the line voltage decreases, favoring
a grid fault.
3) FRT Capability: The stator flux of DFIG is calculated
using the following (see, e.g., [14]):
t
(V s Rs I s )dt.
s = s0 +
(11)
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
Fig. 5.
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Configuration scheme.
TABLE I
P RESSURE D ROP V ERSUS VOLTAGE D ROPAND
C ONTROLLER R EFERENCES
A. Airflow Control
In order to understand the dynamics of wave-powergeneration plants, we must take into account that the efficiency
of OWC-based plants equipped with Wells turbines is particularly affected by the intrinsically unsteady flow of air displaced
by the wave motion inside the chamber and because increasing
the airflow rate above a limit depending on the rotational speed
of the turbine is known to give rise to a rapid drop in the power
output of the turbine. The use of a throttle valve to control
the flow through the turbine and, in this way, to prevent or
reduce the stalling losses at the turbine is expected to increase
the amount of energy produced by the plant, particularly at
higher incident-wave power levels. This increase is expected to
be quite relevant for turbines whose performance is drastically
affected by rotor stalling, as in the case of the turbine used in
this work and most Wells turbines of fixed-pitch type.
The valve is governed by an actuator, which is designed to
allow modulation, in order to reduce or increase the flow rate
through the turbine accordingly with wave-activity variations.
The actuator drives the throttle valve into the demanded position against a counterbalance weight. Once in position, it is held
steady by an electromagnetic brake. In the event of a control
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e(t)dt + K3
de(t)
dt
(12)
1
U (s) = K1 1 +
+ Td s E(s).
Ti s
(13)
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
Fig. 7.
Fig. 8.
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by the Grid Code. Even when the fault has been cleared, highcurrent transients may also produce a new activation of the
crowbar circuit.
The crowbar circuits may be implemented with different configurations. Some of the most popular ones are the antiparallel
thyristor crowbar, shown in Fig. 10, in which each rotor phase
is connected to external resistances and the three-phase diodebridge crowbar, shown in Fig. 9, where the resistive load is
coupled to a thyristor. For our case study, diverse crowbars with
different resistance values were modeled in order to identify
their optimum value. It must be taken into account that low
resistance values keep currents within safe limits but take a long
time to deenergize the rotor, while a high-resistance crowbar
deenergizes the machine rapidly but produce undesired current
peaks. On the other hand, it must be observed that the reactivepower consumption is significant while the crowbar is activated,
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
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TABLE II
T URBINE AND I NDUCTION -G ENERATOR PARAMETERS
TABLE III
S YSTEM PARAMETERS
Fig. 12. Stator phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
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Fig. 13. Rotor phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
Fig. 15. VDC -link voltage (in volts) for the uncontrolled case.
Fig. 16.
Fig. 17.
Fig. 14. Active and reactive power for the uncontrolled case.
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
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Fig. 20. Rotor phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
Fig. 19. Stator phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
proposed airflow control and crowbar control. In the simulations conducted, a double activation of the crowbar is observed,
one at the beginning of the fault and the second one at the
fault recovery. This is due to the aforementioned high rotor
currents produced by the fault (see Fig. 13) so that when
the fault is detected (some milliseconds), since the generator
cannot be disconnected from the grid, it is necessary to take
protective actions to block the RSC by activating the crowbar
circuit. At the same time, the airflow control acts, closing
the air valve and diminishing the turbine throttle. When the
voltage at the dc-link capacitor and the rotor phase currents
are low enough, approximately one hundred milliseconds after
applying the short circuit, the crowbar is turned off, and the
RSC starts switching, regaining the control to reduce both the
active- and reactive-power references. Once the grid voltage
has been recovered, similar disturbances affect the generator,
as shown earlier, and therefore, the crowbar is launched again.
Finally, after a short recovery period, the plant reference steadystate values are retrieved.
Fig. 18 shows the control action generated to regulate the flux
through the turbine. It may be observed that the valve is almost
closed during the voltage dip. In this way, it can be observed
that the stator and rotor phase currents shown in Figs. 19
Fig. 21. Active and reactive power for the controlled case.
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Fig. 22. VDC -link voltage (in volts) for the controlled case.
Fig. 23. Rotor speed (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
Fig. 24.
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
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of the fault. When the fault is detected and the RSC is blocked
by the crowbar, the control over the active- and reactive-power
outputs is temporarily lost (see Figs. 3134). However, the
control of the active and reactive power is regained as soon as
possible, as observed in the aforementioned figures. On fault
clearance, the RSC is disabled again, and a peak reactive power
of 26% of the rated power occurs. Finally, after a short recovery
period, the RSC is reengaged to provide active and reactive
power to the grid. The experiments presented in this Section
provide similar results to those of the numerical simulations
of Section IV, verifying the FRT capability of the proposed
control.
VI. C ONCLUSION
The increasing penetration of renewable distributed powergeneration systems within the sometimes deregulated electricity markets has given rise to new technical requirements.
One of the most demanded requirements is an FRT capability
during voltage drops in the transmission system. In this sense,
although, at present, a specific normative requirement on wave
energy does not exist, the arising issues regarding power grid
faults are similar to those of more extended renewable energies
as in the case of wind energy and must also be solved by means
of adequate fault-tolerant control schemes. When a grid fault
occurs on the transmission system, the speed of the turbogenerator group increases, the induction generator injects large
peak currents, and the plant tends to increment the reactivepower consumption so that they might intensify the voltage dip
and contribute to the collapse of the power network. A simple
solution would be the automatic disconnection of the plant from
the grid in response to the power fault, but this policy could lead
to a series of chain disconnections that would produce a massive
power-network failure.
This paper has investigated the application of a new control
scheme to achieve the uninterrupted operation of OWC-based
wave-power-generation plants equipped with DFIGs during
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Fig. 27. Experimental results. Stator A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
Fig. 28. Experimental results. Stator A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
Fig. 29. Experimental results. Rotor A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
Fig. 30. Experimental results. Rotor A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG
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Fig. 31. Experimental results. Active power (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
Fig. 32. Experimental results. Active power (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
Fig. 33. Experimental results. Reactive power (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.
the throttle air valve during all the voltage-dip periods and the
following recovery period. Simultaneously, the RSC is blocked
by the crowbar in order to protect it from the overcurrents
in the rotor circuit. When the dc-link capacitor voltages and
the rotor phase currents decrease to the operating values, the
crowbar is switched off, and the RSC regains generator control
to reduce the active- and reactive-power references. Through
the whole process, the GSC remains connected, contributing
to the voltage reestablishment by regulating the reactive-power
generation to the grid. At the grid-voltage recovery, a second
crowbar-circuit activation may be required since high current
peaks and dc-link voltage instability may take place again.
During this voltage recovery period, the stator active- and
reactive-power references are adequately adjusted in order to
provide active and reactive power to the grid, and the RSC is
reconnected as soon as possible by the crowbar circuit. Finally,
when the voltage and frequency of the network return to steadystate values, the references are modified again, restoring normal
functioning of the system.
In particular, the simulations performed and the experimental
results obtained show that the aforementioned key problems,
rotor overcurrents, reactive-power increase, and uncontrolled
rotor acceleration, have been avoided or significantly improved.
On the one hand, the valve control, based on a modified
antiwindup PID control law, successfully governs the air valve
that modulates the pressure drop across the turbine in order
to control the acceleration of the turbine. On the other hand,
the crowbar provides great reductions of the stator and rotor
currents. In addition, the RSC successfully controls the active
power and reactive power of the DFIG while the crowbar is not
active, and the GSC controls the dc voltage and the reactive
power exchanged with the grid during all the process.
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Fig. 34. Experimental results. Reactive power (in p.u.) for the controlled case.
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