Journal of Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN0976-7916

JERS/Vol. III/ Issue II/April-June, 2012/72-76

Research Article
MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF DFIG WIND TURBINE
Prof. A.V. Prabhugaonkar
1
, Prof. D.S. Bankar
2
, Dr. D.B. Talange
3

Address for Correspondence
1
M. Tech Student in Electrical Power Systems,
2
Associate Professor,
3
Professor in Electrical Engineering
Department of Govt. College of Engineering Pune-411 005 (India)
ABSTRACT
Wind is one of the most widely used non conventional source of energy. Voltage stability is one of the main issues to have
uninterrupted operation of wind farms equipped with doubly fed induction generators ( DFIGs) during grid faults. Wind
power plants are required to have active and reactive power control, frequency and voltage regulations and certain grid fault
ride through capabilities. A successful low voltage ride through (LVRT) scheme is the main requirement for reliable and
uninterrupted power generation for wind turbines equipped with DFIG. To enhance LVRT capacity a feed forward current
control scheme is used for rotor side converter of DFIG. This conventional current regulator simulation analysis is performed
using PID controllers in MATLAB.
KEY WORDS - DFIG, LVRT, RSC, Current control
1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years there is lot of emphasis on use of
nonconventional sources of energy particularly wind
energy for power generation. These wind plants are
required to have grid ride through capabilities.
[1]According to these grid codes these plant are
required to remain connected to the grid in the event
of voltage dip at the high side of the wind plant step
of transformer with a drop to 0.15 per unit (pu) for
maximum of 0.625 seconds and also drop to 0 volts
for maximum of 9 cycles.[2] The LVRT requirement
is very important but it is difficult to satisfy for wind
plants using DFIG system. This is because the stator
of DFIG is directly connected to the grid and hence
complete DFIG system is very much sensitive to grid
disturbances.
2. DESCRIPTION AND ADVANTAGES OF
DFIG SYSTEM

Figure 1. Basic DFIG system
With the recent progress in modern power
electronics, the concept of a variable-speed wind
turbine (VSWT) equipped with a DFIG is receiving
increasing attention because of its advantages over
other wind turbine generator concepts. In the DFIG
concept, the induction generator is grid-connected at
the stator terminals; the rotor is connected to the
utility grid via a partially rated variable frequency
ac/dc/ac converter (VFC), which only needs to
handle a fraction (25%30%) of the total DFIG
power to achieve full control of the generator. The
VFC consists of a rotor-side converter (RSC) and a
grid-side converter (GSC) connected back-to-back by
a dc-link capacitor. When connected to the grid and
during a grid fault, the RSC of the DFIG may be
blocked to protect it from over current in the rotor
circuit. The wind turbine typically trips shortly after
the converter has blocked and automatically
reconnects to the power network after the fault has
cleared and the normal operation has been restored.
During grid faults the RSC is blocked, and the rotor
circuit is short-circuited through a crowbar circuit (an
external resistor); the DFIG becomes a conventional
induction generator and starts to absorb reactive
power. The wind turbine continues its operation to
produce some active power, and the GSC can be set
to control the reactive power and voltage at the grid
connection. The pitch angle controller might be
activated to prevent the wind turbine from fatal over
speeding. When the fault has cleared and when the
voltage and the frequency in the utility grid have
been reestablished, the RSC will restart, and the wind
turbine will return to normal operation. However, in
the case of a weak power network and during a grid
fault, the GSC cannot provide sufficient reactive
power and voltage support due to its small power
capacity, and there can be a risk of voltage instability.
As a result, utilities, typically, immediately
disconnect the wind turbines from the grid to prevent
such a contingency and reconnect them when normal
operation has been restored. Therefore, voltage
stability is the crucial issue in maintaining
uninterrupted operation of wind turbines equipped
with DFIGs.
3. MODELING AND CONTROL OF DFIG
The basic configuration of a DFIG driven by a wind
turbine is shown in Fig.1. The wind turbine is
connected to the DFIG through a mechanical shaft
system, which consists of a low and a high-speed
shaft with a gearbox in between. The wound rotor
induction machine in this configuration is fed from
both stator and rotor sides. The stator is directly
connected to the grid while the rotor is connected to
the grid through a VFC. In order to produce electrical
power at constant voltage and frequency to the utility
grid for a wide operating range from sub synchronous
to super synchronous speeds, the power flow between
the rotor circuit and the grid must be controlled both
in magnitude and in direction. Therefore, the VFC
consists of two four-quadrant insulated-gate bipolar
transistor (IGBT) pulse width modulation (PWM)
converters connected back-to back by a dc-link
capacitor. The crowbar is used to short circuit the
RSC in order to protect it from over current in the
rotor circuit during transient grid disturbances.
Control of the DFIG is achieved by control of the
VFC, which includes control of the RSC[9] and
control of the GSC.[10] The objective of the RSC is
to independently regulate the stator active and
reactive powers, which are represented by Ps and Qs,
Journal of Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN0976-7916
JERS/Vol. III/ Issue II/April-June, 2012/72-76

respectively. The reactive-power control using the
RSC can be applied to keep the stator voltage Vs
within the desired range, when the DFIG feeds into a
weak power system without any local reactive
compensation. When the DFIG feeds into a strong
power system, the command of Qs can be simply set
to zero. Fig. 2 shows the overall vector control
scheme of the RSC. In order to achieve independent
control of the stator active power Ps and reactive
power Qs
(Fig.1) by means of rotor current regulation, the
instantaneous three-phase rotor currents irabc are
sampled and transformed to dq components idr and
iqr in the stator-flux-oriented reference frame. The
reference values of idr and iqr can be determined
directly from Qs and Ps commands, respectively. The
actual dq current signals (idr and iqr) are then
compared with their reference signals (i
dr and i qr) to generate the error signals, which are
passed through two PI controllers to form the voltage
signals dr1 and qr1. The two voltage signals (dr1
and qr1) are compensated by the corresponding
cross-coupling terms (dr2 and qr2) to form the dq
voltage signals dr and qr. These are then used by
the PWM module to generate the IGBT
The objective of the GSC is primarily to keep the dc-
link voltage constant regardless of the magnitude and
direction of the rotor power.

Fig. 2 Overall control scheme of the RSC.

Fig.3 Overall control scheme of the GSC.
4 WIND TURBINE MODEL
The aerodynamic model of a wind turbine can be
characterized by the well-known CP curves. CP
is called power coefficient, which is a function of
both tip-speed ratio and the
blade pitch angle . The tip-speed ratio is defined
by

where R is the blade length in meters, t is the wind-
turbine rotor speed in radians per second, and Vw is
the wind speed in meters per second. The CP
curves depend on the blade design and are given by
the wind-turbine manufacturer. Given the power
coefficient CP, the mechanical power extracted by
the turbine from the wind is calculated by

where is the air density in kilograms per cubic
meter; Ar =R2 is the area in square meters swept by
the rotor blades. At a specific wind speed, there is a
unique value of t to achieve the maximum power
coefficient CP and thereby extract the maximum
mechanical (wind) power. If the wind speed is below
the rated (maximum) value, the wind turbine operates
in the variable-speed mode, and the rotational speed
is adjusted (by means of active-power control in the
DFIG) such that the maximum value of CP is
achieved. In this operating mode, the wind turbine
pitch control is deactivated, and the pitch angle is
fixed. If the wind speed is above the rated value, the
rotor speed can no longer be controlled within the
limits by increasing the generated power, as this
would lead to overloading of the generator and/or the
converter. In such a situation, the pitch control is
activated to increase the wind turbine pitch angle to
reduce the mechanical power extracted from the
wind. Fig. 4 shows the structure of the pitch angle
controller.
Pt(= Ps + Pr) is the total output active power from
the DFIG.

Fig. 4 Wind-turbine pitch angle controller
5 LVRT PROBLEM AND SOLUTIONS FOR
DFIG SYSTEM
The different types of faults that may affect a wind
farm are mainly classified as symmetrical and non-
symmetrical faults. Actual grid codes only specify
symmetrical faults, because they affect more severely
the grid stability. On the other hand, non-symmetrical
faults are more difficult to deal with DFIG
generators.
The problem with a DFIG when a voltage dip occurs
is that the stator flux cannot follow the sudden
change in stator voltage and a DC component in the
stator flux appears and the stator flux vector becomes
almost stationary. [3]The rotor keeps turning and
high slip is generated, which tends to introduce over-
voltage and over-current in the rotor circuits due to
the effect of speed-voltage. Non-symmetrical faults
create higher over-currents and over-voltages in the
rotor because a negative sequence component exists
in the stator voltage, and the slip of this negative
sequence is very high. The excess current may
damage the power converter, and the over-voltage
may damage the rotor of the generator. In order to
protect the power converter connected to the rotor
from this over-voltage and over-currents a protection
mechanism is necessary.
The usual approach to the problem of voltage dips
has been to place a crowbar circuit connected to the
rotor of the wind turbine.[4][5] The crowbar short
circuits the rotor when a voltage dip is detected and
the power converter connected to the rotor is
protected.
Crowbar circuits may be anti parallel thyristor
crowbar, diode bridge crowbar or other more
unusually configurations. The diode bridge crowbar
is usually preferred to the anti parallel thyristor and
Journal of Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN0976-7916
JERS/Vol. III/ Issue II/April-June, 2012/72-76

the rest of configuration because it uses less
thyristors and it is controlled more easily.
Another solution to LVRT is to connect an additional
energy storage system (ESS)[6] or a dc chopper with
a resistor across the dc bus of the power electronic
converters. The ESS or dc chopper can balance the
extra power that goes through the rotor circuit and
prevent overvoltage at the dc bus. However, this
solution requires an oversized RSC with a higher
rating.
6. RSC CONVENTIONAL CURRENT
CONTROLLER
The conventional vector control scheme is commonly
used to control the DFIG converters. It offers a good
decoupled control of the active and reactive power
for both the RSC and the GSC in the synchronous dq
reference frame.[7]
The dq convention used assumes that the q axis
leads the d-axis by 90. The resulting block diagrams
of the conventional vector control schemes for the
RSC and the GSC are shown in Figs. 5 and 6,
respectively. For the RSC the d-axis is oriented with
the stator flux vector, and for GSC, the d-axis is
oriented with the stator voltage space vector.

Fig. 5 Vector control scheme for the RSC with
traditional FFCR.

Fig. 6 Vector control scheme for the GSC with
traditional FFCR.
In the RSC vector control scheme, the
electromagnetic torque (or stator output active
power) only relates to the q-axis rotor
current ie qr and the stator output reactive power only
relates to the d-axis rotor current ie dr. This
decoupled current control is commonly referred as
the feed-forward current regulator (FFCR) [8]. The
aforementioned FFCR scheme is derived from a
steady state stator voltage and flux condition. The
well-known dq voltage, flux,
and electromagnetic torque equations (motor
convention) for induction machines in an arbitrary
reference frame [8] are
vds = Rs ids + pds qs
ds = Ls ids + Lmidr
vqs = Rs iqs + pqs + ds
qs = Ls iqs + Lmiqr
vdr = Rr idr + pdr ( r )qr
dr = Lmids + Lr idr
vqr = Rr iqr + pqr + ( r )dr
qr = Lmiqs + Lr iqr (3)
where all symbols have their usual meanings and is
the rotating speed of the arbitrary reference frame.
Equations (3) hold in both steady-state and transient
conditions.
7. MATLAB IMPLEMENTATION OF RSC CONVENTIONAL CURRENT CONTROLLER

Fig.7 shows a DFIG wind turbine system using MATLAB Simulink models.

Fig.8 shows the details of DFIG system without any controller while
Journal of Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN0976-7916
JERS/Vol. III/ Issue II/April-June, 2012/72-76


Fig.9 shows same DFIG system with controller.

Figure 10 DFIG with controller
The parameters of the DFIG Wind turbine used in
simulation are as given below.
Wind turbine: rated speed 14 m/s, rated power 5.6
MW
DFIG : MVA 3.6 ,rated stator voltage 4.16 kv , stator
resistance 0.00706 pu , stator reactance 0.171 pu ,
rotor resistance 0.005 pu , rotor reactance 0.151 pu ,
mutual inductance 6 pu


Fig. 11 Results of Simulation of responses to fault
without controller


Fig. 12 Results of Simulation of responses to fault
with controller
It is seen that when fault occurs, there are
disturbances in stator current and stator voltage as
shown in fig.10 when there is no controller. As
against this, with controller, the disturbances in stator
current and voltage are reduced as shown in fig.11.
It is seen that the controller is able to reduce
disturbances in all relevant parameters.


Journal of Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN0976-7916
JERS/Vol. III/ Issue II/April-June, 2012/72-76

9. CONCLUSION
The LVRT is a challenging problem for wind power
plants equipped with DFIGs to provide uninterrupted
electric power. Modern wind turbine plants are
required to be stay connected to the grid under certain
fault conditions. Abrupt terminal voltage dips could
induce a large transient current into the rotor circuit,
which may damage the power electronic converters
and result in disconnection of DFIG wind turbines
from the power grid. This paper gives a brief
overview on the existing LVRT solutions for DFIGs,
and studies the effect of current regulator for the RSC
to enhance the LVRT capability of DFIG wind
turbines. The current regulator helps DFIG wind
turbines to remain in service and continuously supply
active and reactive power to the power grid even
during severe grid faults. The current regulator
scheme is able to reduce the rotor transient current
and disturbances in all relevant parameters.
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