Reactive Power Control in Doubly-Fed Induction Generators for Wind Turbines B. Rabelo*, W. Hofmann*, J.L. Silva**, R.G. Oliveira** and S.R. Silva** *Dresden University of Technology/Dept. of Electrical Machines and Drives, Dresden, Germany **Federal University Of Minas Gerais/Electric Engineering Research and Development Center, Belo Horizonte, Brazil Abstract—High penetration level of wind power generation in the interconnected electrical network and the increasing rated power of the wind energy converter units imposes new technical challenges to engineers. The first one is to guarantee grid stability despite the stochastic nature of wind while the second one is to limit the power losses since electrical machines efficiency do not augment proportionally to the rated power increase in the MWclass. Attending to the new requirements of the power companies on wind turbines concerning the contribution to network stability through reactive power exchange with the mains supply, this work proposes a reactive power control scheme for a doublyfed induction generator drive that minimises the system power losses. This drive topology enables besides the control of active power the independent control of reactive power with both inverters. This degree of freedom is used in order to share the reactive currents resulting on the reactive power required on the network and increasing the efficiency. The steady-state power losses are modeled and the optimal reactive power share working points are found by an iterative procedure. The control structure design is presented and discussed as well as implementation issues. Experimental results are presented in order to prove the theoretical assumptions. I. I NTRODUCTION Power generation and energy savings have become an issue of major importance in the last decades. The shortening of fossil energy sources, air pollution and global warming are pushing the technological development of renewable energy converters. Countries where this development first took place like Germany and Denmark are nowadays market leader manufacturer’s and present a high density on installed wind turbines. Although less turbines are being erected compared to earlier years installed power is still increasing due to repowering. Also the world wind energy market is booming. The 22,000 MW installed capacity in Germany until end of 2007 corresponds to 7% of the country total energy consumption. In the northern and coast states, due to the favourable flat topography and wind regime, the amount of installed power in wind turbines performs more than 30% of the local energy consumption [1]. Furthermore, today’s average wind generating unity power rates 2 MW and tends to increase, specially for the off-shore application, where the benchmark is 5 MW. The wind generation technology development, namely the high penetration of wind power on the electrical network system and the increasing of the generating units rated power are closely related to each other and bring new challenges to the engineers. The considerable amount of wind energy generated and delivered to the interconnected electrical network depends 978-1-4244-1668-4/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE instantaneously on the site weather conditions. Although experience tells that wide-spread wind generation results in more stable average generated powers [2], the dependency on the actual wind conditions is still a risk factor for the balance between energy offer and demand as a basic condition for reliable operation of the electrical power system. On the other hand the increased machine powers is accompanied by a nearly proportional increase on the losses. Electrical machines in the MW-class present very high efficiency values reaching saturation with the state-of-the-art materials and construction technology. Therefore only slight augmentation on efficiency are to be expected with the progressing generator rated power. In order to avoid network stability problems power companies launched guidelines for net connection of wind turbines [3]. These grid codes established similar requirements on usual generating plants to wind power converters, i.e. supporting the network stability in normal operation and during faulty conditions. During normal operation this is translated into the capability of frequency regulation through active power control and of voltage regulation through reactive power control. The work presented in this paper is concentrated on this latter theme and proposes a control strategy for the reactive power flow in a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) drive aiming the reduction of the electrical power losses. The first attempt to reduce losses in a slip-ring induction machine by sharing reactive power between generator stator and rotor was found by the authors in [4]. Instead of a power electronics converter a synchronous generator was connected to the rotor terminals and a DC-machine was used as a prime mover. Voltage and frequency were controlled by varying the synchronous machine excitation and the DC-machine speed, respectively. Later on, an expression for the optimal stator reactive current that minimises the generator copper losses was derived based on the induction machine model in [5]. In [6] this expression was extended to the rotor reactive current and the converter losses were also taken into account in order to find the system overall losses and a more general optimal solution. A variant of the optimisation scheme using the reactive currents instead of the powers was proposed in [7] where experimental results were presented. In this work the control structure for a DFIG drive with reactive power production is described. The controllers design is carried out and implementation issues are discussed. Experimental results in a 4 kW test bench are presented. 106 II. S YSTEM T OPOLOGY AND C ONTROL S TRUCTURE The wound-rotor induction machine drive topologies are well-known since many years as the sub-synchronous and over-synchronous cascades. The reduced power electronics converter rating to handle only part of the machine rated power is one of its main advantages [8]. In modern DFIG drives the variable voltage and frequency rotor circuit is connected to the constant voltage and frequency grid by a back-to-back converter composed of two voltage-source inverters linked through a DC capacitor. The stator circuit is directly connected to the mains supply. The rotor-side inverter (RSI) regulates the slip power controlling the machine speed and torque while the mains-side inverter (MSI) regulates the active power flow between rotor and mains supply maintaining a constant DClink voltage. Output filters are used on the MSI output in order to suppress inverter harmonics on the network. Additional inductors are employed as filters between the RSI and the rotor terminals because of the relative low leakage inductance. The figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of a DFIG drive with the power and current flow. currents permitting the production of reactive power. The choice of the system orientation to the net voltage allows the regulation of reactive power independently from the active power control. Furthermore, the voltage DC-link connecting both rotor-side and mains-side inverters delivers in some extent another degree of freedom, namely the production of reactive power separately with both inverters. The DFIG control is performed in a reference frame rotating synchronously with the mains voltage vector uN = uN d + juN q . The voltage phase displacement ϑ̂N is determined using the phase-locked-loop (PLL) scheme described in [10]. If there is a voltage deviation the PLL controller increases or diminishes the angular frequency ΔωN = ωN − ω̂N accelerating or breaking the rotating coordinate system in order to track the mains voltage vector until the angle deviation ΔϑN = ϑN −ϑ̂N is reduced to a minimum. This implication is illustrated in figure 2. Wind Turbine Pm QS 3 uS DFIG PS iS iR LR f 3 uR PN RSI Mains Supply LN Fig. 2. The synchronous rotating coordinate system is oriented to the mains voltage when uN = uN d and uN q = 0. According to the voltage orientation the d-axis current is considered the active and the q-axis the negative reactive component, respectively. In this way the d-axis currents from mains and rotor sides are responsible for respective the DC-link voltage and speed/torque controls. The q-axis currents are available in order to control the reactive power production on both inverters. On the rotor side the system is oriented to the slip angle The mechanical rotor position ϑ required for the slip angle ϑR = ϑN − ϑ computation is given by an encoder. iN DC-Link uN PDC CDC MSI S QN Qn 3 Lf Pn in uC un Voltage orientation Cf LC-Filter III. S YSTEM DYNAMICAL E QUATIONS Fig. 1. DFIG drive topology A. Generator Model In generator mode active power flows from the network to the rotor in sub-synchronous operation and from the rotor to the network in super-synchronous operation. The converters size is determined by the desired speed range. Usually a ±30% slip enables a suitable operating region for wind turbine applications. At the same time, the use of bi-directional switches, IGBTs and anti-parallel free-wheel diodes enable the phase displacement between inverter output voltages and The control structure developed is based on the induction machine dynamic model whose voltage equations on the synchronously rotating frame are 107 dΨ S + jωS Ψ S dt dΨ R uR = RR iR + + jωR Ψ R dt uS = RS iS + (1) (2) where the flux linkages are given by the expressions Ψ S = LS iS + Lm iR (3) Ψ R = LR iR + Lm iS · RS LS iS iR' ' LR Fig. 3. uN q = 0 = Rf inq + Lf RR' dinq + ωN Lf ind + unq dt (10) (11) The DC-link can be modeled with simplicity neglecting the parasitic elements. It consists of a T-circuit with the current flowing into the capacitor given by the difference between the input and output DC-currents uR' S S R jSS jRR iDC (t) = iDCn (t) − iDCR (t)· The DC-link voltage is then given by 1 uDC (t) = iDC (t)dt + UDC0 , CDC DFIG equivalent circuit in dq reference frame The developed electromagnetic torque is given by Te = dind − ωN Lf inq + und dt C. DC-Link Model Lm S uN d = Rf ind + Lf (4) i uS is approximately the net voltage uC ∼ = uN the MSI output current dynamics is described by the following equations Lm 3 {Ψ S i∗ }· PP R 2 LS (5) Considering all the values referred to the stator side and letting the subscript for rotor values fall the current components can be written as Lm i (6) iSd = − LS Rd Ψ Lm iSq = Sq − i · (7) LS LS Rq Substituting the stator current on the rotor flux linkage equation and developing yields diRd Lm + ωR σLR iRq + ωR Ψ (8) dt LS Sq di uRq = RR iRq + σLR Rq − ωR σLR iRd (9) dt These equations are used to design the rotor current controllers as well as the feed-forward compensation of the cross-coupling terms and of the stator flux. uRd = RR iRd + σLR (12) (13) where UDC0 is the DC-link initial voltage. IV. C ONTROLLERS D ESIGN The control strategy of the DFIG depicted in figure 5 is based on a cascade structure with rapid inner current controllers similarly to the scheme presented in [11]. The current controllers outputs are the reference voltages for the spacevector modulation (SVM) unities that generate the IGBTs gate pulses for the inverters. The current reference values are generated from outer voltage and speed/torque regulators. The choice of voltage orientation presents some important advantages like better stability range than flux oriented systems [12] and direct decomposition of the currents in active and reactive components. A. Current Control The current control design is based on equations 10 and 11. It is a well-known 2-dimensional cross-coupled control problem. Applying the Laplace transform on both equations and developing yields ind (s) = [−und (s) + (uN d (s) + ωN Lf inq (s))] Gin (s); (14) B. LC-Filter Model Lf Rf in iN LN inq (s) = [−unq (s) − (ωN Lf ind (s))] Gin (s), RN where the terms inbetween brackets are the couplings and the transfer function Gin is given by iC un uC uN Gin (s) = Cf S S jNLN iN Fig. 4. 1 K in , = sLf + Rf sTf + 1 LC-filter equivalent circuit Consider voltage orientation and the inverter synchronised with the mains supply voltage. If the voltage drop over the mains impedance LN is neglected and the capacitor voltage (16) where Kin = R1f and Tf = Rff . It can be seen that the LC-filter inductance and its resistance determine the system dynamics. The transfer functions on both dq-channels are identical as well as the controllers design. The inverter deadtime, signal conditioning, A/D-conversion and processing time delays can be added up to a time constant TΣ of a few sample times and modeled as a first order transfer function 1 Ginv (s) = · (17) sTΣ + 1 L jNLf in (15) 108 Sq iR Control te Control te * te -1 - R iRd* Lm L Sind uRd* - iRd RLR ind iRq qS Control qS* qS iRq* iSq - RLR ind im in Control qn Control qn* qn uRq* - - inq* -1 - inq - - unq* - Fig. 6. N Lif Step response for the current control loop nd ind uDC Control uDC* uDC ind* N Lif nd - - On the rotor side the current control design is carried out in a similar way using equations 8 and 9. The controller parameters are computed using the technical optimum method und* - uNd Fig. 5. DFIG control structure With the compensation of the coupling terms a simple linear control problem arises. The technical optimum design method can be employed enabling a relative fast control response avoiding over-shoots as it is required to the inner current control loop. The PI-controller parameters, the proportional gain and the integral time, are found to be KPin = Lf ; 2TΣ σLR ; TIiR = TR · (21) 2TΣ The response of the q-axis rotor current to a reference step from −1 A to 1 A as well as the couplings with the d-axis current is shown in figure 7. KPiR = 0 ird (A) ird* Ŧ1 TIin = Tf · (18) Ŧ1.5 Ŧ0.01 For the implementation the controllers were discretised using the trapezoidal or Tustin rule given by the following bilinear relation that maps the imaginary axis onto the unit circle in the z-domain. 2 1 − z −1 s= · T 1 + z −1 b0 + b1 z −1 Y (z) , = E(z) a0 + a1 z −1 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 2 rq (19) 1 0 irq Ŧ1 irq* Ŧ2 Ŧ0.01 0 0.01 Fig. 7. (20) where Y (z) = Z{y(t)} and E(z) = Z{e(t)}. The step response for the closed loop current control on the MSI-side for the continuous design Gc (s) and for the digital design Gc (z) are presented in figure 6 together with the measured values of the step response on the current inq . The good correspondence between the theoretical and practical values was achieved after modeling the system dead-time of 3.5 sample times and some tuning on the plant parameters that were found to be slightly higher than the initial values. 0 i (A) The continuous PI-controllers structure can be written as the rational discrete form GR (z) = ird Ŧ0.5 t (s) 0.02 0.03 0.04 Step response of iRq B. Active Power Control The active power is controlled indirectly through the electromagnetic torque on the rotor side and through the DC-link voltage control on the mains side. A detailed description of the design will be set aside in this paper and explained in another publication. In this moment it is enough to mention that the torque controller is tuned using the technical optimum method in a similar way as it will be presented for the reactive power controllers. The voltage controller is designed in order 109 to present good disturbance rejection characteristics using the symmetrical optimum criteria [8], [9]. Although only active power can flow through the DC-link, deviations from the constant value affect indirectly the reactive power through deviations on the inverters output voltages. Therefore, good dynamics of the DC-link voltage control turns to an important issue that will be explored in detail in a future work. The figure 8 shows the response to a reference step as well as the speed and rotor currents variation across the synchronous speed. T (Nm) 4 2 T e e 0 −2 Te* 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 C. Reactive Power Control The MSI controls the reactive power to be controlled at the NCP. Under voltage orientation it is translated by the equation 3 3 3 {uN i∗n } = (uN q ind − uN d inq ) = − uN d inq · (22) 2 2 2 Considering the mains voltage constant and the inner closed loop current control, one has a linear control problem. qn = GP qn (s) = 5 Control (rad/s) 160 m ω 140 qn 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 Plant n n -1 - . GF q n - 3 2 qn 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 Step response of Te The approach to the reactive power controller design is based on the common requirements on generation units, i.e., it should regulate the power avoiding over-shoots and oscillations. The controller parameters should be computed in such a way that the control loop is well-damped. Therefore, technical optimum criteria can be also applied here. The controller parameters are determined considering the filter time constant Tfqn as (A) KPqn = 165 160 U 155 150 0 (A) 5 DC UDC* 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 ind TIqn = Tfqn · (24) 3 3 {uS i∗S } = − uSd (iμ − iRq ), 2 2 (25) Ψm where the magnetising current is given by iμ = L and can m be fed-forward compensated. In this way the linear control problem can be solved using the technical optimum where the controller parameters are 0 i −5 0 Tfqn ; 2Kqn TΣ The step response of the mains side reactive power control can be observed in the figure 11. The power peaks with the multiple of the fundamental frequency can be seen while the averaged power value follows the designed dynamics. Similar approach is carried out to the rotor side, i.e. to the stator reactive power. Under the voltage orientation the stator reactive power can be computed as follows qS = n abc Mains side reactive power control plant −2 i Rabc Fig. 10. 0 A step response on the DC-link voltage as well as the MSI output currents and the d-axis active current component are shown in figure 9 (V) inq 5 2 Fig. 8. DC inq* 4 −4 U uNd Gci GR q qn* 150 0 (23) The computation of the reactive power involves the multiplication of measured voltages and currents. Due to drift and noise these values can vary deteriorating the computed power and influencing the control. Hence, the computed value is filtered before being passed to the control. The block diagram of the control system is depicted in figure 10. 170 130 qn 3 = Kqn = − ÛN d · inq 2 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 t (s) K Pq = S Fig. 9. Step response of UDC TfqS ; 2KqS TΣ TIqS = TfqS · (26) TfqS is the filter time constant and the plant gain is given by KqS = − 32 ÛSd . 110 The dynamic couplings with the active power are almost imperceivable due to the well-damped reactive power control. The decrease on the total active power caused by the increase on the active power input at the MSI-side can be observed. 1.4 1.2 n q /q * 1 V. R EACTIVE P OWER S HARE The regulation of the voltage and/or power factor makes more sense in the net connecting point (NCP) of a wind park or in isolated systems where the single machine can be a representative amount of the short-circuit power. Depending on the system configuration and operating conditions these higher level regulators deliver the reference reactive power that is passed to the single machines. Locally the reactive power can be produced by both RSI and MSI making possible the reactive power share. This association can be seen in figure 13. n 0.8 0.6 0.4 q simulated n 0.2 q measured n 0 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 t (sec) Fig. 11. Step response of qn Wind Park Active and Reactive Power Management In order to evaluate the dynamic response of both reactive controllers in operation reference steps of qS∗ and qn∗ were applied simultaneously. The recorded results of the active and reactive powers on both sides as well as for the total power on the NCP can be observed in figure 12. Net Frequency Regulation m f N p N k k 1 pN1 . . . pNm pNx MPPT me* Local Reactive Power Control q N Dividing 0 Net Voltage Regulation PN Ŧ0.2 PS0 QN QS0 Ŧ0.4 0 0.5 1 1.5 QS PS Ŧ0.2 0.6 u N 0.4 0.2 2 0 PS0 0.8 k 1 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 Fig. 13. 0.8 Ŧ0.4 qC iSq* - iRq* - i qn Control - qn * - inq* Frequency (active power) and voltage (reactive power) regulation 0.6 0.5 1 1.5 2 0.04 0 Qn 0.02 QS0 S0 0 qS qNx qn 0.5 1 1.5 The reactive power splitting factor q α= S qN 2 0.05 P Nk 1 QS0 0 Pn m q qN1 . . . qNm qS Control qS * 0 0.5 1 t (s) Fig. 12. 1.5 2 0 Ŧ0.05 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 t (s) ∗ steps Active and reactive power responses for qS∗ and qn The power values are normalised by the generator rated active power PS0 = 4000 W and rated reactive power QS0 = 3200 VAr. At the stator side the reference was varied from 2000 VAr to 3000 VAr at t = 0s and back at t = 1s. At the same time instants the MSI reference value was stepped from −100 VAr to 100 VAr and back. The steps are carried out with the generator delivering pS = 1000 W. A very important issue is to tune the reactive power controllers in order to have the same or very close dynamics. In this way the total reactive power response will also present a similar dynamic characteristic. Normally the generator-side influence is bigger than the MSI-side but depending on the capacitor contribution qC this latter can be also significant. (27) was defined in previous works [6] and can be found depending on the operating conditions in order to reduce power losses. In order to demonstrate the influence on the active power the reference value α∗ is varied from 1.17 to 0.97 during 2 seconds for a fixed operating point and compared to the measured one given by 27, as shown in figure 14. The implications of the reactive power share variation on the power flow are depicted in figure 15. The left column presents filtered instantaneous active powers normalised by PS0 while the right column presents the respective filtered reactive powers normalised by QS0 . The reactive powers on the stator qS and at the MSI qn , shown in the down right diagrams, follow their respective references given by the relations 27 and qn = qN (1 − α) − qC · (28) In this way the total reactive power delivered at the NCP qN remains constant as can be observed in the upper right diagram. On the left column are the total generated active 111 couplings with the active power. Also the increasing on the generated power was presented. Future works should present the computation of the optimal sharing factor and its range for the whole operating range. The couplings between active and reactive power in the currents and due to DC-link voltage variations will be further analysed in order to compensation solutions to be found. Another power control approaches should be studied like direct power control. Finally, the impact of the reactive power control on lowvoltage ride through problem should be addressed. 1.2 q α = qS N α α∗ 1.15 1.1 1.05 1 A PPENDIX A PARAMETERS 0.95 0 Fig. 14. 1 2 3 4 t (s) 5 6 Rated Power Stator Voltage Stator Current Power Factor Mechanical Speed Rotor Voltage Rotor Current tator Resistance Rotor Resistance Magnetising Inductance Stator Inductance Rotor Inductance Moment of Inertia Friction Coefficient Filter Inductance Filter Resistance Filter Capacitance Variation of reference and measured values of α power pN at the NCP, the stator active power pS and the MSI active power pn , respectively. It can be seen that the total generated power as well as the stator power increase during the reactive power share variation. The consumed active power on the MSI reduces and passes through a minimum. p N P S0 −0.24 1 −0.26 q N Q 0.9 pS PS0 0 2 4 6 2 4 6 R EFERENCES −0.3 S0 0 2 4 6 0.03 0.8 0 2 4 6 4 6 0.2 pn S0 0 q S Q 1 −0.28 −0.32 P 0.8 −0.26 −0.34 0.1 qn QS0 0.02 0.01 4000 W 380 V 8.6 A 0.84 1440 rpm 160 V 15.5 A 1.5 Ω 0.9 Ω 139 mH 148 mH 141 mH 0.045kgm2 0.00727 N ms 8 mH 0.5 Ω 69 mF S0 −0.28 −0.3 Pmec US IS cos ϕS nm UR0 IR0 RS RR Lm LS LR Jg Bg Lf Rf Cf 0 2 4 6 0 −0.1 0 t (s) Fig. 15. 2 t(s) Active and reactive powers during the variation of α These results and other not shown here pointed out that there exists optimal reactive power distribution values for different operating conditions in order to reduce the power losses on the whole system and hence increasing the efficiency. VI. C ONCLUSION A control structure and design for reactive power regulators in DFIG drives was presented. The proposed scheme uses well-known linear control techniques and can be implemented easily in existing plants. 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