1036

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 23, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008

Ride-Through Control of a Doubly Fed Induction

Generator Under Unbalanced Voltage Sags
Oriol Gomis-Bellmunt, Member, IEEE, Adri`a Junyent-Ferre, Andreas Sumper, Member, IEEE,
and Joan Bergas-Jane, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper deals with the control of doubly fed induction generators to ride through unbalanced voltage sags. A
control strategy is proposed by choosing certain current reference
values in the positive and negative sequences so that the torque
and the dc voltage are kept stable during such unbalanced sags.
Both rotor- and grid-side converters are considered, detailing the
control scheme of each converter while considering the effect of the
crowbar protection. The control strategy is validated by means of
simulations.
Index TermsDoubly fed induction generator (DFIG),
unbalanced voltage sags, wind power generation.

ix
vx
Sx

E
t
e
r
m

s
P
f
Rr
Rs
Lr
Ls
M
s
r
c
l
z

NOMENCLATURE
Vectors
Current vector ixd + jixq .
Voltage vector vxd + jvxq .
Power vector Px + jQx .
Symbols
Flux linkage.
Torque.
dc bus voltage.
Time.
Electrical angular velocity.
Rotor electrical angular velocity.
Mechanical angular velocity.
Angle.
Slip.
Generator number of poles.
Frequency.
Rotor resistance.
Stator resistance.
Rotor inductance.
Stator inductance.
Mutual inductance.
Superscripts
Stator.
Rotor.
Rotor-side converter.
Grid-side converter.
Grid.

Filter.

1st Subscript
d-axis.
q-axis.
Nonoscillating component.
sin oscillating component.
cos oscillating component
2nd Subscript

Set point.
p
Positive sequence.
n
Negative sequence.
Acronyms
IMC
Internal mode control.
SVPWM Space vector pulse width modulation.
DFIG
Doubly fed induction generator.
PLL
Phase-locked loop.
DTC
Direct torque control.
All the quantities are in SI units. Stator and rotor quantities
are referred to the stator.
d
q
0
sin
cos

I. INTRODUCTION
IND power is one of the most promising renewable
energy sources after the progress undergone during the
last decades. However, its integration into power systems has a
number of technical challenges concerning security of supply,
in terms of reliability, availability, and power quality. Many
relevant contributions have been recently done to face such
challenges, ranging from the control of active [1] and reactive [2]
power, to the modeling [3], [4] of different classes of wind
turbines.
The increasing penetration level of wind energy has motivated
the establishment of grid connection requirements. Among such
requirements, voltage dip ride-through capability stands as one
of the most relevant properties demanded by wind-turbine-based
generation systems.
Nowadays, doubly fed induction generators (DFIG) are the
most employed generators for wind energy applications. The
stator of such wound rotor machines is directly connected to
the electrical grid, and therefore, it is extremely sensitive to
voltage disturbances. For this reason, it is of crucial importance
to investigate the behavior and control of DFIG systems under
different classes of voltage sags.
Control of DFIG for wind turbine applications has been
deeply analyzed in the last decade considering balanced operation [5][11]. When unbalanced sags occur, the main problem
is that very high current, torque, and power oscillations appear

Manuscript received September 27, 2007; revised November 5, 2007. Current

version published November 21, 2008. Paper no. TEC-00352-2007.
The authors are with the Centre dInnovacio Tecnol`ogica en Convertidors
Est`atics i Accionaments (CITCEA-UPC), Departament dEnginyeria El`ectrica,
Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya, ETS dEnginyeria Industrial de Barcelona,
and EU dEnginyeria T`ecnica Industrial de Barcelona, Barcelona 08028, Spain
(e-mail: oriol.gomis@upc.edu).
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/TEC.2008.2001440

0885-8969/$25.00 2008 IEEE

GOMIS-BELLMUNT et al.: RIDE-THROUGH CONTROL OF A DOUBLY FED INDUCTION GENERATOR UNDER UNBALANCED VOLTAGE SAGS

Fig. 2.

Fig. 1.

General system scheme.

at double the electrical frequency, forcing a disconnection. Such

oscillations are provoked by the negative sequence components
injected by the unbalanced disturbance.
On the other hand, some authors [12], [13] have proposed
techniques to deal with different classes of unbalanced voltage
disturbances, applying them to dc/ac converters, taking into account the negative-sequence appearing with voltage unbalances.
Such techniques have been applied to the DFIG in [14], considering the rotor-side converter and small unbalances. Other authors
have proposed alternative methods to deal with such voltage unbalances. A ride-through analysis of unbalanced voltage sags
is presented in [15], using active crowbar and DTC. A method
based on a disturbance rejection controller is proposed in [16]
to compensate the 2e oscillations produced by unbalances, by
adding a feedforward component to the current controllers. The
case of unbalanced load for stand-alone DFIG is studied in [17].
This paper describes a technique to control DFIG under unbalanced voltage sags. In comparison with [15] and [16], it
uses the approach based on separating the positive and negative components of all the currents and voltages, as suggested
in [12] and [13] for dc/ac converters and applied to the DFIG
as in in [14]. This paper introduces the following contributions:
1) The whole system is analyzed, considering both the grid-side
and rotor-side converters. The grid-side converter control is not
considered in in [14] or [16]. 2) A technique to keep the dc bus
stable is proposed, based on compensating the rotor power delivered by the rotor-side converter in the grid-side converter. 3) The
objective of the technique is to ride through voltage sags; hence,
the main analyzed quantities are the generator torque and the dc
voltage bus. 4) Since this paper deals with ride through voltage
sags, the crowbar protection is considered (it is not considered
in [14] or in [16]).
This paper has been organized as follows. In Section II, the
control scheme under balanced conditions is discussed. The unbalanced case is analyzed in Section III. The proposed technique
is validated by means of simulations in Section IV. The obtained
results are discussed in Section V, and finally, the conclusions
are summarized in Section VI.
II. CONTROL SCHEME UNDER BALANCED CONDITIONS
The general scheme under analysis can be seen in Fig. 1.
The DFIG is attached to the wind turbine by means of a gearbox. The DFIG stator windings are connected directly to the
grid while the rotor windings are connected to a back-to-back

1037

Back-to-back converter.

converter (see Fig. 2). The converter is composed of the gridside converter connected to the grid and the rotor-side converter
connected to the wound rotor windings. The converter set points
are established by the so-called high-level controller. It uses the
knowledge of the wind speed and the grid active and reactive
power requirements to determine the optimum turbine pitch angle and the torque and reactive power set points referenced to the
converter. The rotor-side converter controls torque and reactive
power, while the grid-side converter controls the dc voltage and
grid-side reactive power. Although the back-to-back converter
can control both the reactive power injected by the stator by
controlling the rotor currents and the reactive power injected
directly to the grid with the grid-side converter, it is a common
practice to deliver most of the referenced reactive power through
the stator while keeping a low or null reactive power set point
in the grid-side converter.
In this section, a balanced voltage supply is assumed. Such
a case has been deeply analyzed in [5][11], and hence, it is
briefly described for the sake of completeness.
A. Grid-Side Converter
In the grid-side converter, the dc bus voltage and reactive
power references determine the current references, which determine the voltages to be applied in the grid side.
1) System Equations: In a synchronous reference frame, the
grid-side voltage equations can be written as


 




Ll e
vlq
Rl
ilq
vz q

=
vz d
vld
Ll e
Rl
ild



Ll 0 d ilq
+
.
(1)
0 Ll dt ild
Active and reactive power provided by the grid-side converter can be written as Pz = 3/2(vz q ilq + vz d ild ) and Qz =
3/2(vz q ild vz d ilq ).
The dc bus voltage can be expressed as

1 t
E = E0 +
(iD C l iD C r ) dt.
(2)
C 0
2) Reference Quantities: The grid-side converter controls
the reactive power and dc bus voltage. The q-axis may be aligned
to the grid voltage allowing active and reactive decoupled control. To control the reactive power, a ild reference is computed
as
ild =

2Qz
.
3vz q

(3)

1038

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 23, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008

The active power, which is responsible for the evolution of

the dc bus voltage is controlled by the ilq component. A linear
controller is usually designed to control the dc bus voltage.
3) Current Loops Implementation: The current control is
done by the following state linearization feedback [18]:




vlq + vz q Ll e ild
vlq
=
(4)
vld

vld + Ll e ilq
where the vlq and vld are the output voltages of the current
controller. The decoupling leads to

  1




  Rl
0
0
ilq
vlq
d ilq
Ll
Ll
=
+
.
l
dt ild
ild
vq d
0 L1l
0
R
Ll
(5)
B. Rotor-Side Converter
In the rotor-side converter, the referenced torque and reactive
power determine the current references, which determine the
voltages to be applied in the rotor side.
1) Machine Equations: It is usually assumed that when the
stator and rotor windings are placed sinusoidally and symmetrically, the magnetical saturation effects and the capacitance of
all the windings are negligible. The relation between voltages
and currents on a synchronous reference qd can be written as

Ls 0 M 0
isq
vsq

i
0 L

v
0 M
sd
s
sd

d
=
+

M 0 Lr 0 dt
vr q
ir q

0 M 0 Lr
vr d
ir d

Rs
Ls e
0
M e isq

Rs
M e
0
s e

isd
+

0
sM e
Rr
sLr e
ir q

sM e
0
sLr e
Rr
ir d
(6)
Linkage fluxes can be written as

sq
Ls 0 M

sd
0 Ls 0
=

M 0 Lr
r q

0 M 0
r d

isq

M
isd
.

0
ir q

Lr
ir d

3
P M (isq ir d isd ir q ).
2
The reactive power yields

Controllers have been designed using the so-called internal

mode control (IMC) methodology detailed in [19]. The parameters of a PI controller to obtain a desired time constant are
obtained as
L
R
Ki = .
(13)
Kp = ,

The currents and voltages have been limited according to the

converter operating limits. PI controllers have been designed
with antiwindup in order to prevent control instabilities when
the controller exceed the limit values.
D. Crowbar Protection
The so-called crowbar is connected to avoid overvoltages in
the dc bus due to excessive power flowing from the rotor inverter
to the grid-side converter, guaranteeing ride through operation
of the generator when voltage sags or other disturbances occur.
The crowbar is triggered when the dc voltage reaches a threshold vcrow c and disconnects when it goes below another threshold vcrow d .
During its operation, the rotor-side converter may be disconnected, as described in [20], or be kept connected [9] to avoid
losing control over the machine. In this paper, the rotor-side
converter is kept connected.
III. CONTROL SCHEME UNDER UNBALANCED CONDITIONS

(7)

(8)

3
(vsq isd vsd isq ) .
(9)
2
2) Reference Quantities: Orientating the synchronous reference qd with the stator flux vector so that sd = 0, the rotor
current references can be computed as

 23 L s Q s +M v s q i r d +v s d s q
ir q
M vs d
.
(10)
=
2L s m

ir d
3P M s q
Qs =

C. Current Controllers Tuning

The torque can expressed as

m =

3) Current Loops Implementation: The control of the current is done by linearizing the current dynamics using the following state feedback.





vr q + M (e r ) isd + Lr (e r ) ir d
vr q
=
vr d
vr d M (e r ) isq Lr (e r ) ir q .
(11)
By neglecting stator current transients, the decoupling leads to




R

  1



r
0
0
ir q
vr q
d ir q
Lr
Lr
=
+
.
r
dt ir d
ir d
vr d
0 L1r
0 R
Lr
(12)

In this section, nonsymmetrical voltage sags are considered.

Such unbalanced sags imply negative sequence components in
all the relevant quantities. Therefore, important oscillations appear in torque, active and reactive power. Such oscillations have
a pulsation of 2e . In order to mitigate such oscillations, an approach taking into account the negative sequence quantities is
required. Such an approach has been discussed in [12] and [13],
and has been applied to the rotor-side converter of a DFIG in
[14]. This section analyzes a whole back-to-back converter taking into account both the positive and negative sequence components, and proposes a technique to control optimally both the dc
bus voltage and the torque when unbalanced voltage sags occur.
As far as unbalanced systems are concerned, it is useful to
express three-phase quantities xabc = {xa , xb , xc }T in direct
and inverse components as
x = ej e t+j 0 xp + ej e tj 0 xn

(14)

GOMIS-BELLMUNT et al.: RIDE-THROUGH CONTROL OF A DOUBLY FED INDUCTION GENERATOR UNDER UNBALANCED VOLTAGE SAGS



where x = 2/3 xa + axb + a2 xc , a = ej 2 /3 , xp = xpd +
jxpq , and xn = xnd + jxnq . In this section, voltages, currents,
and fluxes are regarded as a composition of such positive and
negative sequences.
A. Grid-Side Converter Analysis
1) Voltage Equations: Considering two rotating reference
frames at +e and e , the voltage equations for the positive
and negative sequences yield
p
p
vzp q d vlq
d = (Rl + je Ll ) ilq d + Ll
n
n
vznq d vlq
d = (Rl je Ll ) ilq d

diplq d

dt
dinlq d
+ Ll
dt

(15)

2) Active and Reactive Power: Active and reactive power

can be written as [13]
3
[Pl0 + Plcos cos (2e t) + Plsin sin (2e t)] (17)
2
3
Ql = [Ql0 + Qlcos cos (2e t) + Qlsin sin (2e t)] (18)
2
Pl =

where

p
vz d
Pl0

Plcos
vz d

P
vn
lsin
zq
=
vp

Ql0

zq

Q
v
lcos

zq

Qlsin
vznd

vznq
p
vzpq
ild

p
ip

n
p
vz d vz q
vz d
lq

.
vzpd vznq
vznd
inld

vznd vzpq
vzpd inlq
vznq
vzpd
vzpq
(19)
It can be noted that both active and reactive power have three
different components each, and hence with the four regulatable
currents ipld , iplq , inld , and inlq , only four of such six powers can be
controlled.
vzpq
vznq

vznd
vzpd

B. Machine-Side Converter Analysis

1) Voltage Equations: Considering two rotating reference
frames at +e and e , the voltage equations for the positive
and negative sequences can be obtained as

p 


vs
Ls M d ips
=
M Lr dt ipr
vrp


p 
Rs + jLs e
jM e
is
+
jM (e r ) Rr + jLr (e r )
ipr

vsn
vrn


=
+

Ls
M


M
Lr

d
dt

ins
inr

(20)

Rs je Ls

+jM (e r )

n
is
n .
ir

2) Stator Power Expression: The apparent stator power can

be expressed as
3
(22)
Ss = Ps + jQs = vs is .
2
Using (14), we have


Ss = ej e t+j 0 vsp + ej e tj 0 vsn


 j tj  n 
e
0
(23)
ej e t+j 0 ip
is
s + e
n n
Ss = vsp ip
s + vs i s

+ ej 2 e t+j 2 0 vsp ins + ej 2 e tj 2 0 vsn ip

s .
xis

(16)

je M
Rr + jLr (e r )

(21)

1039

xisd

(24)

jxisq ,

Taking into account

=
+
and rearranging it gives
Ss = Ps + jQs , with
3
Ps = [Ps0 + Pscos cos (2e t + 20 )
2
(25)
+Pssin sin (2e t + 20 )]
Qs =

3
[Qs0 + Qscos cos (2e t + 20 )
2
+Qssin sin (2e t + 20 )]

where

p
vsd
Ps0

vn

P
sd

scos

P

n
vsq
ssin
=
vp

Qs0
sq

Qscos vsq

n
Qssin
vsd

p
vsq

n
vsd

n
vsq
n
vsd

p
vsd
p
vsq

p
vsd
n
vsd
n
vsq

n
vsq
p
vsq
p
vsd

n
vsq

(26)

ip

sd

ipsq

.
n n
vsd
isd

p n
isq
vsd
p
vsq
(27)
p
vsq
p
vsd

Substituting stator currents in (27)

p
p
n
Ps0
vsd
vsq
vsd

n
n

P
vsq
vsd

vsd
scos

n
n
p
vsd
vsq
1
ssin
vsq
=
p
p
n

Ls
Qs0
vsd
vsq

vsq

n
n
p

vsq
Qscos
vsd
vsq

p
n
n
Qssin
vsd vsq
vsd
p
p
sd M ir d

p M ip

sq
rq

nsd M inrd

n
n
sq M ir q

n
vsq
p
vsq

vsd

n
vsd
p

vsd
p
vsq

(28)

it can be noted that both active and reactive power quantitities

have three different components each, and therefore, with the
four regulable currents ipr d , ipr q , inrd , and inrq , only four of the six
power quantities can be controlled.
3) Rotor Power Expression: The apparent rotor power can
be expressed as
3
(29)
Sr = Pr + jQr = vr ir
2

3
Sr = ej ( e r )t+j r 0 vrp + ej ( e + r )tj r 0 vrn
2


ej ( e r )t+j r 0 ipr + ej ( e + r )tj r 0 inr .
(30)

1040

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 23, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008

Fig. 3.

General control scheme.

C. Reference Current Calculation

Using (14), we have

Sr =

3 p p
[v i + vrn inr
2 r r


. (31)
+ ej 2 e t+2j r 0 vrp inr + ej 2 e tj 2 r 0 vrn ip
r
Taking into account xis = xisd + jxisq , and rearranging and analyzing the active rotor power
Pr =

3
[Pr 0 + Prcos cos (2e t + 2r 0 )
2
+ Prsin sin (2e t + 2r 0 )]

(32)

where

p
P
vcd

r0

n
Prcos = vcd

n
vcq
rsin

p
vcq

n
vcd

n
vcq
n
vcd

p
vcd
p
vcq

ipr d

ip
p
rq
vcq
.

inrd
p

vcd
n
ir q
n
vcq

(33)

4) Torque Expression: Analogously, electrical torque can be

expressed as
=

P3
[0 + sin sin (2e t) + cos cos (2e t)]
22

(34)

where

0
M sq
n
cos =
sd

L
s

sin
nsq

psd
nsq
nsd

nsq
psd
psq

ipr d
n

sd
ip

rq
p
.
sq

inrd

sd n
ir q
(35)

Since there are eight degrees of freedom (the rotor-side currents ipr d , ipr q , inrd , and inrq , and the grid-side currents ipld , iplq ,
inld , and inlq ), eight control objectives may be chosen. This implies that it is not possible to eliminate all the oscillations provoked by the unbalance. In this paper, the main objective is
to ride through voltage dips. Hence, it is important to keep
the torque and dc bus voltage as constant as possible and to
keep reasonable values of reactive power. To this end, it has
been chosen to determine the currents to keep certain values
of 0 , cos , sin , and Qs0 for the rotor-side converter and

, Plsin
and Ql0 for the grid-side converter. It can be
Pl0 , Plcos

, and Plsin
are directly linked to the dc bus
noted that Pl0 , Plcos
voltage.
The dc voltage E is regulated by means of a linear controller
whose output is the power demanded by the grid-side converter.
Considering the power terms Pr 0 , Prcos , and Prsin in the rotor
side converter, Pr 0 can be regarded as the average power delivered, while Prcos and Prsin are the rotor power oscillating terms.
Such terms will cause dc voltage oscillations, and hence they
can be canceled by choosing

= Prcos
Plcos

Plsin
= Prsin .

(36)

Pl0 can be computed as

Pl0 = Pr 0 + PE
where PE is the output of the dc voltage linear controller.

(37)

GOMIS-BELLMUNT et al.: RIDE-THROUGH CONTROL OF A DOUBLY FED INDUCTION GENERATOR UNDER UNBALANCED VOLTAGE SAGS

Fig. 4.

Positive and negative components calculation.

Fig. 5.

The grid reference currents can be computed from (19), (33),

(36), and (37) as

p p

vz d
vzpq
vznd
vznq 1 PE
ild

0
vn

ip

vznq
vzpd
vzpq
zd

lq
=

p
n
n
p
vz d

0
inld

vz q vz d vz q

n
p
p
n
n
vz q vz d vz q
vz d
Ql0
ilq
p
p
n
n p
vcd
vcq
vcd
vcq

ir d

p
vn
n
p
vcq
vcd vcq ipr q
cd

+ n
. (38)
p
n
p
n
vcq vcd

vcq
vcd
i

rd

0
0
0
0
ir q
The rotor reference currents can be computed from (28) and
(35) as
p p
i
sq

rpd

n
ir q
sd
=

n
n

ir d
sq

p
ir q
vsq

1
M


Ls Qs0

psd

nsq

nsq
nsd

psd
psq

p
vsd

n
vsq

2 2 Ls
P 3 M 0
2 2 Ls
P 3 M cos
2 2 Ls
P 3 M sin
p
p
psd vsq
+ psq vsd

n
nsd vsq

nsd

psq

psd
n
vsd

n
nsq vsd

1041

Output voltage calculation: rotor-side converter example.

E. Controllers Linearization and Tuning

a) Grid-Side: Similarly to the balanced case developed in
Section II-A3, the control of the current is done by linearizing
the current dynamics using
p
p
v
zp q d = vzp q d vlq
d je Ll ilq d

(40)

n
n
v
znq d = vznq d vlq
d + je Ll ilq d .

(41)

The decoupled system yields

diplq d
dt

v
zp q d Rl iplq d

(42)

Ll

dinlq d
v
znq d Rl inlq d
=
.
dt
Ll

(43)

b) Rotor-Side: Analogously to Section II-B3

v
rp = vrp jM (e r )ips jLr (e r )ipr
v
rn

vrn

jM (e

r )ins

jLr (e

r )inr .

(44)
(45)

Neglecting the derivative of stator currents, the decoupled system yields

(39)

v
p Rr ipr
dipr
= r
dt
Lr

(46)

dinr
v
n Rr inr
= r
.
dt
Lr

(47)

c) Controller Tuning: The controllers can be designed using

classical linear control techniques. As in Section II-C, a PI
controller is used, tuned according to IMC [19]. For a time
constant , the parameters obtained yield Kp = L and Ki = R .

D. Control Implementation

F. Output Voltage Calculation

1) Positive and Negative Components Calculation: The positive and negative sequence components calculation is done by
using the Clarke transformation, rotating either ej e t or ej e t ,
and finally, applying a notch-filter at 2e to eliminate the opposite sequence. The technique is exemplified in Fig. 4. For
the rotor voltages and currents, the rotation applied is either
ej ( e r )t or ej ( e r )t .
2) Reference Orientation: The rotating references have been
p
p
= 0. Nevertheless, vsq
aligned with the stator voltage so that vsq
has not been substituted in previous expressions for the sake of
describing general results. Orientation may be done computing
the required 0 assuming a constant e or using a PLL [21] to
determine both e and 0 .

The output voltages calculation is done by summing the resulting positive and negative sequence voltages in the stationary
reference frame. For the line side
vl = ej e t vlp + ej e t vln .

(48)

vr = ej ( e r )t vrp + ej ( e r )t vrn .

(49)

For the rotor side

The resulting voltages are limited according to the converter

rating. The final voltages can be applied using standard space
vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) techniques. The
technique is exemplified for the rotor-side converter case in
Fig. 5.

1042

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 23, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008

TABLE I
SIMULATED SYSTEM DATA

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

In order to evaluate the ride-through capability of the proposed scheme, the system has been simulated with severe voltage sags, making the control work at the maximum output voltage and dealing with the triggering of the crowbar protection.
The system under study is a 2- MW DFIG-based wind turbine,
where a two-phase 50% type E [22] voltage sag of 2 s has been
applied. The data of the simulated system may be seen in Table I.
In order to compare the presented control scheme and some
existing techniques, the following three cases have been studied.
T1 Balanced control case: It is the classical control approach,
which does not take into account the possibility of unbalanced voltage disturbances. It is described in a number of
references [5][11]. In this case, the synchronous reference frame is aligned with the stator flux and the control
is implemented, as described in Section II.
T2 Unbalanced control 1: The technique described in Section III is applied, with the exception that it does not use
the rotor power compensation.
T3 Unbalanced control 2: The technique described in Section III is applied, also considering the rotor power compensation.
In order to guarantee the ride through over voltage sags, it
is extremely important to keep both the dc voltage bus and
the machine torque as constant as possible while operating the
converter in the safety operation area.
As far as the torque is concerned, the comparison of the proposed technique T3 and the classical approach T1 (Fig. 6) shows
that torque oscillations have been eliminated. It can be observed
that for the technique T1 there is an important permanent torque
oscillation between 9800 and 1700 Nm. It is known that such
torque sign changes can provoke serious damage to the turbine
mechanics. For the technique T3, the torque remains stable close
to 4000 Nm. Furthermore, the speed is clearly more stable
for the T3 case, as illustrated in Fig. 7.
Regarding dc voltage bus evolution, it is shown in Fig. 8(a)
that the proposed technique T3 shows important advantages
over technique T2, which does not compensate the rotor power.
The dc voltage oscillation for T1 is of 106 V while for T3 is
of 21 V, meaning an oscillation reduction of more than 80%.
This can be clearly seen in Fig. 8(b). Furthermore, as shown
in Fig. 8(c), the voltage oscillation may provoke overtriggering
of the crowbar. For technique T3, there is only one connection
while for technique T2, there are 14 connections. Concerning
the restoration of the dc peak voltage produced when the grid

Fig. 6. Torque response comparison of a two-phase voltage sag of 50% using

the standard control technique T1 without considering unbalanced conditions
and the technique T3 proposed in this paper. (a) Torque response for the whole
voltage sag time. (b) Torque evolution in the center of the sag.

Fig. 7. Rotor speed comparison of a two-phase voltage sag of 50% using the
standard control technique T1 without considering unbalanced conditions and
the technique T3 proposed in this paper.

GOMIS-BELLMUNT et al.: RIDE-THROUGH CONTROL OF A DOUBLY FED INDUCTION GENERATOR UNDER UNBALANCED VOLTAGE SAGS

1043

Fig. 9. Voltage response to a two-phase voltage sag of 50 %. (a) Voltages

evolution for the whole voltage sag time. (b) Voltages evolution in the center of
the sag.

voltage unbalance suffered as a consequence of the two-phase

sag is compensated by also applying unbalanced voltages both
to the rotor- and grid-side converters. Such unbalances allow
the control to suppress almost completely the torque oscillations keeping the rotor speed stable along with a reasonably low
level of dc voltage oscillations.
V. RESULTS AND IMPLEMENTATION DISCUSSION

Fig. 8. Comparison of the dc voltage response to a 50% two-phase voltage-sag

using T3 or T2. (a) DC voltage response for the whole voltage sag time. (b) DC
voltage evolution in the center of the sag. (c) DC voltage response in the initial
time of the sag.

voltage returns to normal values, it can be seen that the dc

voltage peak of T3 is significantly smaller than for T2, being of
1321 V for T3 and of 1412 V for T2.
The evolution of different voltages for the technique T3 during the sag are shown in Fig. 9. It can be noted that the grid

The technique T3 has proven to provide the most optimum

results. Such results are achieved by implementing eight current
control loops, whose reference values are computed as described
in (38) and (39). The increased complexity of the control scheme
in comparison with classical balanced control techniques allow to have more degrees of freedom in the control and to apply
unbalanced voltage both in the DFIG rotor and the grid-side
converters.
Since there are eight degrees of freedom, eight reference
quantities have been chosen, taking into account that each active and reactive power implies three different quantities (dc

1044

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 23, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2008

component, sin (2e t) dependent and cos (2e t) dependent).

The chosen reference quantities are the DFIG torques (0 , cos ,
sin ), the average DFIG reactive power Qs0 , the grid-side active

power (Pl0 , Plcos

, and Plsin
implying dc bus voltage control),
and the grid-side average reactive power Ql0 .
Since there are actually 12 objective reference quantities, 3
components (dc,sin,cos) 4 powers (2 active and 2 reactive
powers), the decision of which eight quantities are chosen is an
engineering tradeoff. In this case, it can be noted that the reactive
powers are fixed as per average value, but their oscillating terms
(Qscos , Qssin , Qlcos , and Qlsin ) are not referenced, and therefore,
they oscillate at 2e . This can be prevented by choosing such
reactive power oscillating terms as reference quantities at the
cost of permitting the oscillation of the active power.
Concerning the obtained results, the most relevant observed
improvements can be summarized as
1) An optimum torque control is achieved. After a transient,
the desired torque is obtained. This is remarkable in comparison to the behavior of the balanced technique T1,
where the torque has important oscillations that may result
in serious damage to the mechanics of the wind turbine.
The difference can be clearly seen in Fig. 6. This advantage is important not only in severe sags but in small unbalances, where the proposed control technique provides
constant torque assuring a longer life of the gearbox and
the mechanical components of the turbine.
2) The dc voltage oscillations are minimized as shown in
Fig. 8. This is obtained by compensating the rotor power
transients in the dc bus voltage control. It is important
to note that the stability of such dc voltage implies less
connections of the crowbar protection, and hence, guarantees an improved stability of the system. Instability of the
dc voltage may lead to repetitive limit cycles, where the
crowbar is permanently connecting and disconnecting.
3) Under balanced operation, the system operates equally to
the balanced techniques, not introducing any unbalance
in the power grid.
The improved results are obtained at the cost of higher computation complexity. Although this paper presents only simulation
results, some guidelines are given on how to implement the
proposed technique in real DFIG systems.
The use of digital signal processors (DSPs) is appropriate for
this application; for example, the TMS320C2812 from Texas
Instruments Incorporated [23]. The DSP has to develop the
following tasks in each switching cycle:
1) Performing of the analog to digital conversion of the measured voltages and currents shown in Fig. 3.
2) Acquisition of the position from an encoder or resolver
signal and computation of the rotor speed.
3) Determination of the grid electrical angle and pulsation
either assuming that the frequency is fixed and known or
using a phase-locked loop (PLL) to determine both angle
and frequency.
4) Computation of the qd components in the positive and
negative sequences, according to Fig. 4. The notch
filters may be implemented using Butterworth digital
filters.

5) Computation of the reference currents according to (38)

and (39). The main difficulty is the inverse computation of
two 4 4 matrices. Equations (38) and (39) are expressed
without specific orientation. If the rotating references are
chosen so that one of the voltages is zero, the inverse of
the matrix can be more easily computed.
6) Execution of the PI current loops and computation of the
output voltage taking into account the feedforward decoupling terms.
7) Determination of the states of the PWM outputs according
to SVPWM, as illustrated in Fig. 5.
Although a single DSP could deal with all such tasks using the
two available event managers, it may be interesting to use two
different DSPs, one for the rotor-side converter and another for
the grid-side converter. The information they need to exchange
can be stored in a shared memory that both controllers can
access.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented a control technique to deal with
DFIG operation under unbalanced voltage sags, taking into account the presence of positive and negative sequence components in voltages and currents. Both rotor- and grid-side converters are considered, which detail the control scheme to be used
in each converter while considering the effect of the crowbar
protection. The proposed technique achieves an almost constant
torque during the unbalanced sag and compensates the rotor
power oscillations by defining appropriate grid-side converter
reference currents so that the dc voltage is kept stable. The
control strategy has been validated by means of simulations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Montserrat Mata and Marc
Sala from Ecot`ecnia for their support and collaboration.
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Oriol Gomis-Bellmunt (S05M07) received the

Degree in industrial engineering from the School
of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB),
Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona,
Spain, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the UPC in 2007.
In 1999, he joined Engitrol S.L., where he was a
Project Engineer in the automation and control industry implementing control and supervision systems in
several cement, chemical, paper, and transportation
industries. In 2003, he developed part of his Ph.D.
thesis at the DLR (German Aerospace Center), Braunschweig, Germany. Since
2004, he is with the Electrical Engineering Department (DEE), UPC, where
he is currently lecturer, and participates in the Centre for Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Drives (CITCEA)-UPC research group. His
current research interests include the fields linked with smart actuators, electrical
machines, power electronics, renewable energy integration in power systems,
industrial automation, and engineering education.

1045

Adri`a Junyent-Ferre was born in Barcelona, Spain,

in 1982. He received the degree in industrial engineering from the Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain, in 2007.
His current research interests include the modeling
and control of electrical machines and power converters and its use in renewable generation systems.

Andreas Sumper (S05M08) was born in Villach,

Austria. He received the Dipl.-Ing. in electrical engineering from Technical University of Graz, Graz,
Austria, in 2000, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Universitat Polit`ecnica de
Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2008.
From 2001 to 2002, he was a Project Manager
for innovation projects in private industry. In 2002,
he jointed the Centre for Technological Innovation in
Static Converters and Drives (CITCEA), UPC. Since
2006, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Escola Universit`aria dEnginyeria T`ecnica
Industrial de Barcelona (EUETIB), UPC. In the CITCEA-UPC, he was engaged
in technology transfer with the local industry due to research and innovation
projects in the field of power quality, renewable energies, and power systems.
His current research interests include power quality, electrical machines, power
system studies, and distributed generation.

Joan Bergas-Jane (M97) was born in Manresa,

Spain, in 1970. He received the B.S. degree in industrial engineering and the Ph.D. degree in engineering from the Universitat Polit`ecnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 and 2000, respectively.
Since 2002, he has been an Assistant Professor in
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitat
Polit`ecnica de Catalunya. His current research interest include the areas of power system quality, power
electronics, and digital motor control.