UPEC2010 31st Aug - 3rd Sept 2010

Control of a squirrel cage induction generator wind farm connected to a single power converter
Llu s Trilla , Oriol Gomis-Bellmunt , Adri` a Junyent-Ferr e , Agust Egea Alvarez
Catalonia

and Antoni Sudri` a-Andreu

Institute for Energy Research (IREC) Josep Pla 2, B2 Planta Baixa - 08019 Barcelona (Spain). Email: lltrilla@irec.cat Centre dInnovaci o Tecnol` ogica en Convertidors Est` atics i Accionaments (CITCEA-UPC) Departament dEnginyeria El` ectrica. Universitat Polit` ecnica de Catalunya - 08028 Barcelona (Spain).

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyze the control of several wind power generators based on squirrel cage induction generators with one common power converter. This conguration is especially useful for offshore wind farms with a VSC-HVDC transmission. A comparison with a conguration where each generator is connected to one power converter, is done focusing in the total power extraction. Scalar-controlled squirrel cage induction generators have been implemented in both cases. The control scheme has been modied implementing an aggregated model in order to allow the common converter to perform appropriated control tasks. A fault ride-through control protects the DC bus from overvoltages, it varies the torque and slip reference to limit the total output power. Results have been validated by means of simulation in both scenarios showing the differences in the total power obtained and the inuence of the generator operating point. The performance of the system under onshore grid faults has been simulated.

I. I NTRODUCTION The increasing demand on clean energy is making the development of wind power more interesting [9]. Offshore options are becoming more appealing since the difculty of nding good onshore locations with strong, regular winds that are also close to the grid is increasing. Offshore wind farms situated further than 60 km from the shore can be connected to the grid through DC links [1] [11] [12]. In this case an offshore power converter has to perform the DC power conversion, different connection topologies have been studied by other authors [7] [10]. Transmission using HVDC requires a full power converter onshore that adapts the power to the needs of the grid. This transmission system has some advantages, as it smooths the impact of the wind farm on grid stability, especially in areas with weak AC systems. In modern wind power plants, usually each generator is controlled by one power converter, which keeps the machine working at its optimum operating point while maximizing wind power capture. As more devices are working in the wind farm the probability of failure of one of them becomes higher. This is an important factor because of the difculties accessing an offshore park. In addition, each power converter adds a percentage to the energy loss and implies a higher initial investment. This paper analyzes a topology and control scheme where one power converter controls several machines at the same time. This conguration allows the wind farms to be divided

into clusters, controlled with a reduced number of power converters. In the proposed scheme the control of various squirrel cage induction generators is performed by variation of system frequency and voltage, keeping the ux in the generator constant. Control actions have to manage a set of wind power generators. In order to calculate the control reference values an aggregated model has been implemented. These models are used in simulations of large wind farms testing different connection topologies [13]. In the aggregated model different incoming wind speeds are considered for each turbine, and the generator angular speed is measured with sensors, then the mean speed of all the machines is used by the controller to compute the frequency and the voltage. An analysis of the reaction when a wind speed change is done and a comparison between this conguration and a classic topology is presented here. A full power converter is necessary to convert the AC medium voltage to HVDC. As will be shown, the use of this converter to do control tasks, and the elimination of individual power converters leads to a poorer performance since the operating point of the park is moved away from the optimum. On the other hand the number of elements offshore is reduced and thus there is less energy loss. In order to keep the DC bus voltage constant the controller modies the torque reference signal limiting the total output electrical power. The line fault ride through performance of the implemented control scheme is shown via simulation and the resultant effect of the torque control is analyzed. This paper is organized as follows: the wind farm connection topology proposed is introduced in Section II, followed in Section III by a description of the model used. The control scheme is explained in Section IV and simulation results are presented in Section V. Conclusions are in Section VI. II. C ONNECTION TOPOLOGY In order to test the capacity of controlling several machines in different operating points a common converter conguration is modelled. This topology consists of several wind power generators interconnected to the wind farm grid and controlled by one full power converter. The DC conversion for the transmission to the onshore grid is done by this power converter.

As previously stated in offshore wind farms (where the onshore transmission is in HVDC) a full power converter is necessary. A conguration where a common power converter controls a set of generators will be compared to an individual conguration with one power converter per generator and individual control actions. Radial interconnection has been implemented, as is studied in [6] and the energy losses in cables (for AC and DC transmission), transformers and converters have been computed. The total electrical energy loss in transmission and conversion systems is higher in individual power converter topology than in the common power converter conguration. In addition, as less machines are working, the probability of failure in the system is smaller. Fig. 1 illustrates the connection topology.
Common Power Converter
Onshore Power Converter

Cp = c1 (c2

1 1 c6 )ec7 1 1 = c9 wt R = vw

(1) (2) (3)

Pitch angle control has not been implemented and the shaft is a one mass model. B. Generator model The well-known squirrel cage induction machines (also known as xed-speed induction machines) are implemented in this model. The caged rotor is the least expensive and simplest technology compared with other commonly used wounded rotor and permanent magnet machines. These squirrel cage machines work close to the angular synchronous speed with a very small slip. Its behavior is modelled by the dynamic equations (4)-(7) expressed in the qd rotating frame. The rotor is short-circuited in the generator, therefore its voltage components are zero. Choosing the base angular speed as sync = b = 2frated ,units are expressed in p.u. usd = Rs isd + usq dsd s sq dt dsq = Rs isq + + s sd dt

Main AC grid

Wind farm AC grid

HVDC link

Onshore

Fig. 1.

Connection topology

(4)

It should be noted that the wind power generators are working at different operating points, thus the wind power caption is not maximized. All of the generators are working with the same frequency but with different wind speeds, so the operating point is deviated and the control is not optimized. Consequently, the system will not obtain the total amount of available energy (this is known as Cp losses). As more similar are the incoming wind speeds more similar are the operating points of the generators and more proper are the control actions taken by the controller. As the incoming wind speeds are more different, total Cp losses increase as well. This trend changes once the turbine speed limit is reached and the blade pitch controller starts up [3], since this controller acts on each machine individually and can adjust its operating point independently. At the onshore side of the DC link there is another power converter which manages the DC to AC conversion, and transfers the energy to the grid at the proper frequency with the necessary reactive power component. III. S YSTEM MODELLING A. Turbine Turbines are modelled using the data from [14], the radius blade has been incremented and the whole set of parameters can be nd in the appendix. The expression (1) has been used to compute the resultant Cp coefcient keeping the pitch angle equal to zero.

urd = Rr ird + urq

drd (s r ) rq = 0 dt drq = Rr irq + + (s r ) rd = 0 dt sd = Ls isd + Lm ird sq = Ls isq + Lm irq rd = Lm isd + Lr ird sq = Lm isq + Lr irq

(5)

(6)

(7)

Where s and r are the stator and rotor electrical angular speeds respectively. Electromagnetic torque, real and reactive power are expressed as follows: el = sd isq sq isd Pel = usq isq + usd isd Qel = usq isd usd isq C. Power Converter The full power converter used is a standard IGBT-based voltage source controller (VSC). The nominal power of the power converter is at least equal to the sum of the nominal powers of all the generators that it has to control at maximum power caption conditions. The same type of converter is used offshore and onshore. (8)

D. Wind park grid and HVDC transmission A transformer is connected to each generator and a medium voltage AC grid has been considered. A high voltage transformer delivers the total power to the offshore converter and the HVDC transmission cables are implemented according to the Cigr e benchmark model [15]. IV. C ONTROL SCHEME A. Scalar Control The widely used scalar control [2], [4] has been implemented to drive multiple generators. The scalar-controlled devices have been used for a long time in industry for single machine control and are easy to implement, although they give inferior performance then vector control schemes. In general, the scalar control is applicable when the speed does not have to change rapidly in the machine. In this control scheme the ratio voltage/frequency (V olt/Hz ) is kept constant. Assuming that the voltage is proportional to the frequency, ux amplitude is maintained s constant = U e , neglecting stator resistance Rs . It is necessary to measure the generator speed and thus use a communication link in order to send the data to the controller and compute the torque and the optimum torque. The slip frequency necessary to minimize the calculated error can be obtained with a classic PI. The torque is kept proportional to the slip while the machine is in the linear working area, which is close to zero slip speed. In the practical implementation a boost voltage U0 = Rs is is added in order to compensate the drop at the stator resistance. The boost voltage becomes important at low speeds because the stator resistance tends to absorb more voltage but is negligible at high frequencies. B. Aggregated Model There are several ways to simulate a wind farm [8], depending on the topology of the park, the needs of the control or the variables of interest in the simulation. In this case it is important to note that the control system does not control each machine individually; instead, it obtains information about the whole set of generators. Thus, its task is to apply the proper control actions to all the machines at the same time. In order to get the data of the set of generators, it is worth aggregating the models at some point before the controller reads it. Fig. 2 illustrates the control scheme used. In this scheme the aggregation is performed once the rotor speed is sensed in each machine. When the whole set of speed of generators is computed the total torque can be calculated as Pe using the total electric power obtained at the power = g converter. It is worth noting that the total power is obtained from the total voltage and current applied to the system. This fact prevents the controller computing the individual torque of each machine (even knowing their individual angular speed) because the actual power of each separate generator is unknown. In this scheme the mean speed (9) of all the generators involved has been used and the control action is

computed as only one machine has to be controlled. Voltage and frequency, applied by the converter, are the same for all the generators because they are sharing the same grid. Other types of aggregation (e.g. torque, speed square) can be considered in order to improve the control performance but comparison of these techniques is out of the scope of this paper.
N

gi (9) N Where gi is the electrical angular speed of each generator and N is the number of generators involved. The optimum torque 2 = KCp g (10) where p is the number of pole pairs and r is the mechanical angular speed of the rotor. Once the slip is computed with the PI controller the frequency can be calculated e = slip + g = slip + pr and be imposed to the system. C. Line Fault Ride Through During a voltage sag in the AC grid the capacity of energy evacuation of the onshore converter drops drastically. When the DC bus voltage increases and exceeds a minimum level the controller reduces the torque and the slip reference in order to decrease the amount of power generated. This reduction is proportional to the voltage level reached by the DC bus, if this voltage goes beyond a maximum level the torque and the slip reference are set to zero until the voltage is back to its nominal value. In Fig. 2 can be seen a schematic representation of the line fault ride through control. D. Onshore converter The VSC converter controls independently active and reactive power. This converter has to keep constant the HVDC voltage adjusting the active power delivered to the grid and reactive power use to support the grid voltage when a line fault is detected as is implemented by [16]. There is no communication between offshore and onshore controllers and they act separately. When the system is facing a voltage dip the onshore converter has a limited rank of action, if the HVDC voltage control is lost the offshore controller starts to operate. V. S IMULATION RESULTS Topology and the control scheme have been tested in simulation using Matlab/Simulink R , modelling three turbines of 2MW each one. Reactions when facing wind speed variations and their adaption to these changes for the whole set of generators and each individual machine have been checked. In the model some simplications have been made, energy losses have been considered in cables, transformers and converters but harmonic distortion in power converter and transformer saturation are not considered. The parameters used to simulate the model of generator can be found in [5] and in Table I. Two different systems have been compared using the same wind series, the wind steps used can be seen at Fig. 3. g =
i=1

Fig. 2.

Control scheme

TABLE I PARAMETERS OF THE GENERATOR IN P. U . 50H Z , 2MW, 690V Rs Xs 0.048 0.075 Rr Xr 0.018 0.120 Xm 3.800

Incoming wind speed 12 11.5 11

by the turbines increases, its optimum becomes further from the operating point, and thus less power is generated. However, when incoming winds are equal for the three turbines the power generated reaches its maximum level and becomes the same with both topologies, because all the turbines are working at their optimum level.
Total electric power 0.55 Common converter Individual converter 0.545

wind speed (m/s)

10.5 10 9.5 9
0.53 Power (p.u.) 0.54

0.535

8.5 8 5
0.525

10

15

20 time(s)

25

30

35

40
0.52 10

15

20

Fig. 3.

Incoming wind speed Fig. 4.

25 time(s)

30

35

40

Total electrical power extracted

The system has a common power converter and three wind power generators. The controller performs the control tasks using the aggregated model. In order to show a comparison with classical topology another system is modelled connecting one power converter to each generator. The control scheme used in this case is a classic scalar control. The total power generated is shown in Fig. 4. Solid line represents the power generated with the common converter conguration, and the dashed line is the power generated with the individual topology. The results show variation in the power extracted when the incoming winds are different (the common power converter scheme generates less power because not all the machines are operating at their optimum point). In fact as the difference in the incoming winds received

The individual power generated by each machine is plotted in Fig. 5 where the horizontal lines mark the limit of the energy extraction (this limit is reached with the individual converter topology). As can be seen turbine number 2 is operating close to its optimum because its operating point is in the middle of the other two turbines. The maximum energy extraction is reached when the Cp coefcient reaches its optimum, in Fig 6. is shown the evolution of this parameter. In order to check the performance of the LFRT control a voltage sag to the 0.1 p.u. has been simulated, Fig. 7. Wind speed is kept constant but different for each turbine. The evolution of the torques (solid lines) of the machines and the

Individual electric power 0.8 Turbine1 Turbine2 Turbine3

Grid side voltage 1 0.8 0.6 0.4

0.75

0.7

0.65

0.6 Power (p.u.)

Voltage (p.u.)

0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6

0.55

0.5

0.45

0.8
0.4

1 14.8 15 15.2 15.4 time(s) 15.6 15.8 16

0.35

0.3 10

15

20

25 time(s)

30

35

40

Fig. 7.

AC grid voltage
Mechanical torque

Fig. 5.

Individual electrical power

0.5 Generator1 Generator2 Generator3 Torque controller signal

Cp

0
0.44 Turbine1 Turbine2 Turbine3 Maximum Cp

0.43

Torque (p.u.)

0.5

0.42

0.41

Cp

0.4

1
0.39

10
0.38

11

12

13

14

15 time(s)

16

17

18

19

20

0.37

Fig. 8.
0.36 0.35 10

Machine torques and control signal

15

20

25 time(s)

30

35

40

VI. C ONCLUSION In this paper, a method to control several wind power generators at the same time using a common converter is developed. This topology is especially appropriate for offshore wind farms where transmission is performed via HVDC. In this scheme a power converter which interacts with the DC link is used in order to control a set of machines. Using this method, some of the initial investment is saved and the total energy loss in the conversions is reduced. By means of this simulation, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme when incoming wind speeds received by the turbines become similar has been proven. Performance is better when the operating points of the machines are closer. When these points are different, the control actions applied become increasingly inadequate, and performance capturing the wind power becomes lower. The HVDC voltage stability when the park is facing a line fault has been proven. Once the grid voltage is recovered the system goes back to its initial operating points smoothly and

Fig. 6.

Cp coecient

control signal (dashed line) can be seen in Fig. 8 where the torque is set practically to zero during line fault. The HVDC voltage is plotted in Fig. 9, is maintained close to its reference level and stabilized rapidly by the combined action of the two controllers. In Fig. 10 is shown the overall power delivered by the park and its evolution though the voltage sag. It drops to zero when the torque is set to zero by the controller. Mechanical angular speed increases sharply because the electrical torque is set to zero. When the fault is cleared the generators go back to their operating point as can be seen in Fig. 11.

DC voltage 1.15

Angular speed 148 Generator1 Generator2 Generator3 Electrical angular speed

146

1.1
Angular speed (rad/s)

144

142

Voltage (p.u)

1.05

140

138

136

0.95

134 10

11

12

13

14

15 time(s)

16

17

18

19

20

0.9 10

11

12

13

14

15 time(s)

16

17

18

19

20

Fig. 11.

Mechanical and electrical speeds

Fig. 9.

HVDC voltage

R EFERENCES

[1] N.M. Kirby, M.J. Luckett, L. Xu, W. Siepmann. HVDC transmission for large off shore wind farms. IEE AC-DC Power Transmission, pp. 1620.7 168, Conference Publication No. 485, London 2001. Electric power [2] M.P. Ka zmierkowski, R. Krishnan, F. blaabjerg. Control in Power Electronics: Selected Problems. Academic Press, 2002. 0.6 [3] D. Jovcic, N. Strachan. Offshore wind farm with centralised power conversion and DC interconnection. IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., Vol. 0.5 3, Iss. 6, pp. 586-595, 2009. [4] B.K. Bose. Modern Power Electronics and AC Drives. Prentice-Hall, 2001. 0.4 [5] A. Sumper, O. Gomis-Bellmunt, A. Sudria-Andreu, R. Villafala-Robles, J. Rull-Duran. Response of Fixed Speed Wind Turbines to System Fre0.3 quency Disturbances. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2009. [6] X. Liu, S. Islam. Reliability issues of Offshore Wind Farm Topology. 0.2 Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems. PMAPS 08. pp.1-5, 25-29 May 2008. 0.1 [7] K. Zhou, X. Fu, M. Cheng, X. Zhu, W. Wang, T. Wang. Topologies and Control of VSC-HVDC Systems for Grid Connection of Large-Scale Off-Shore Wind Farms. Electrical Machines and Systems. ICEMS 2008. 0 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 pp.2357-2361, 17-20 Oct. 2008 time(s) [8] L.M. Fern andez, J.R. Saenz, F. Jurado. Dynamic models of wind farms with xed speed wind turbines. Renewable Energy, Vol. 31, Iss 8, pp.12031230, July 2006. Fig. 10. Total power [9] L. Wang, J. Wei, X. Wang, X. Zhang.The development and prospect of offshore wind power technology in the world WNWEC 2009, pp.1-4, September 2009. [10] D. Jovcic. Interconnecting offshore wind farms using multiterminal VSCwithout strong transient states. based HVDC. Power Engineering Society General Meeting, 2006. IEEE. [11] A.B. Morton, S. Cowdroy, J.R.A. Hill, M. Halliday, G.D. Nicholson. A PPENDIX AC or DC? economics of grid connection design for offshore wind farms ACDC 2006. The 8th IEE International Conference on, pp. 236-240, March 2006. The parameters used to model the turbine can be nd in [12] F. Wang, P. Yunqing, D. Boroyevich, R. Burgos, K. Ngo. Ac vs. dc Table II. distribution for off-shore power delivery. IECON 2008. 34th Annual Conference of IEEE, pp.2113-2118, November 2008. TABLE II [13] J.G. Slootweg, W.L. Kling. Aggregated modelling of wind parks in PARAMETERS OF TURBINE power system dynamics simulations. Power Tech Conference Proceedings, 2003 IEEE Bologna. Vol.3, pp. 6, June 2003. Inertia 16 105 kg m2 Gear ratio 65.27 c2 116 c7 21 [14] Z. Lubosny. Wind Turbine Operation In Electric Power Systems: AdRadius 37.5 m c1 0.5 c6 5 c9 0.035 vanced Modeling. Ed Springer-Verlag New York. September 2003. [15] M. Szechtman, T. Wess, C.V. Thio. First benchmark model for HVDC control studies. Electra, no. 135, pp. 54-67. April 1991. [16] O. Gomis-Bellmunt, A. junyent-Ferr, A. Sumper, J. Bergas-Jan. Ride Through control of a doubly fed induction generator under unbalanced ACKNOWLEDGMENT voltage sags, IEEE Transactions on energy Conversion, vol, 23. no 4. pp. 1036-1045, 2008. This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e
Total electrical power

Innovaci on under the project ENE2009-08555.

Power (p.u.)