544

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 22, NO. 2, JUNE 2007

Control System for Unbalanced Operation of Stand-Alone Doubly Fed Induction Generators
Rub n Pe a, Member, IEEE, Roberto C rdenas, Senior Member, IEEE, Enrique Escobar, e n a Jon Clare, Senior Member, IEEE, and Pat Wheeler, Member, IEEE

AbstractIn this letter, a novel control system for the operation of a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG), feeding an unbalanced three-phase load is presented. The load unbalance is compensated using the front-end converter. The control system is based on two revolving axes, rotating at e , which are used to control the positive and negative sequence currents supplied by the front-end converter. Experimental results obtained from a 2-kW experimental prototype are presented and discussed in this letter. Index TermsInduction generators, power generation control.
Fig. 1. DFIG sourcing a stand-alone unbalanced load.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE DOUBLY fed induction generator (DFIG) is widely used for variable speed wind energy generation. In the DFIG, the power converters are connected to the rotor, and for restricted speed range operation, they are rated to only a fraction of the machine nominal power in [1]. The DFIG can be used to supply electrical energy to unbalanced stand-alone loads. In this case, negative sequence currents are generated, producing electrical torque pulsations and localized heating in [2], [3] in the machine. This may reduce the life span of a typical generation system [2]. In this letter, a control system for compensating the effects of load unbalance is proposed. Compensation is achieved by regulating the negative sequence current supplied from the frontend converter. This drives the negative sequence currents in the DFIG to zero, thereby, eliminating the torque pulsations. II. CONTROL SYSTEM PROPOSED

In the control system proposed in this letter, the DFIG stator is star connected, with the neutral of the generator connected to the load neutral point (see Fig. 1). The rotor-side converter is vector controlled using the methodology proposed in [1]. The front-end (or stator-side) converter is controlled to supply positive and negative sequence currents to the load. The front-end converter vector control system is shown in Fig. 2. The system is oriented along the stator voltage vector. Because of the unbalance, a phase locked loop (PLL) is implemented to calculate the stator voltage angle v in [4]. From +v and v , the currents can be referred to two synchronous d-q axes rotating at +e and e , respectively. Double-frequency
Manuscript received October 16, 2006; revised March 14, 2007. Paper no. PESL-00083-2006. R. Pe a, R. C rdenas, and E. Escobar are with the Electrical Engin a neering Department, University of Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile (e-mail: ruben.pena@umag.cl; rcd@ieee.org; enriqueescoba@gmail.com). J. Clare and P. Wheeler are with the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of Nottingham, NG7 2R Nottingham, U.K. (e-mail: jon.clare@nottingham.ac.uk; pat.wheeler@nottingham.ac.uk). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TEC.2006.895393

Fig. 2.

Proposed control system for the front-end converter.

components are produced, when the positive/negative sequence currents are referred to the d-q axis rotating in the opposite direction [3]. As shown in Fig. 2, notch lters are used to eliminate these high-frequency components. The control systems for the front-end positive sequence currents i+ and i+ are entirely conventional ([1], Fig. 2). The df qf current i+ regulates the dc link voltage E and the current i+ df qf regulates the reactive power supplied to the load. The front-end negative sequence currents are regulated to i = i = (i + i ). dqf dqL dqs dqf (1)

0885-8969/$25.00 2007 IEEE

 PENA et al.: CONTROL SYSTEM FOR UNBALANCED OPERATION OF GENERATORS

545

Fig. 4.

Stator voltage. (a) Before compensation. (b) After compensation.

Fig. 3. Control system response. (a) Negative sequence currents. (b) Stator and rotor unltered currents referred to the d-q positive sequence axis.

Therefore, the negative sequence current demand is a function of the load negative sequence current. In the steady state, when i = i , the stator current i = 0 [see (1)], and dqf dqL dqs the torque pulsations are eliminated. The total current supplied from the front-end converter is limited to avoid overloading. Assuming i+ = 0, the maximum qf current available to compensate the negative sequence stator current is (i )2 df + (i )2 qf Irated i+ df (2) where Irated is the converter nominal current. In this work, it is assumed that the control of the positive sequence currents has a higher priority. Therefore, in each sampling time, the demand current i+ is calculated rst. After that the maximum negative df sequence current is obtained using (2). In abc coordinates, the total voltage demand for the front-end converter is obtained as (see Fig. 2) + vabc = vabc + vabc . (3) III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The control systems of Figs. 1 and 2 have been implemented in a DSP-controlled experimental system. A 2-kW, two-poles DFIG, driven by a cage induction machine, is used in this prototype. To eliminate the double-frequency components, notch lters, with a bandwidth of 10 Hz, are designed in the z-plane using the pole-zero method. The line to line stator voltage is regulated to about 240 V and the dc link voltage is regulated to 530 V. Fig. 3 shows the performance of the proposed control system for negative sequence current compensation under variable speed operation. The loads are three resistors of 25, 154, and 154 , connected to phases a, b, and c, respectively (see Fig. 1). The rotational speed is varied from 1350 to 1650 rpm. Before t 1.25 s, the proposed compensation system is not operating and the stator currents have a negative sequence component [see Fig. 3(a)]. For t 1.25 s, the compensation is enabled and the stator current i is driven to zero. For t > 1.5s, i i dqs dql dqf and the torque pulsations are eliminated from the DFIG. Fig. 3(b) shows the unltered machine currents referred to the d-q axis rotating at +e . Notch lters are not applied to the

Fig. 5.

Unltered rotor voltage referred to the d-q positive sequence axis.

currents shown in Fig. 3(b). For t < 1.25 s, the DFIG d-q currents have a double-frequency component, which is eliminated after t 1.25 s, when the proposed control system is enabled. The stator voltage in - coordinates is shown in Fig. 4. Before enabling the compensation, the voltage is unbalanced [see Fig. 4(a)]. After t 1.5 s, the negative sequence load current is supplied by the front-end converter and the stator voltage is approximately balanced. Finally, Fig. 5 shows the unltered rotor voltage referred to the positive sequence d-q axis. Again, the high-frequency components are eliminated from the rotor voltage, when the proposed compensation method is enabled. IV. CONCLUSION A new control system for the compensation of the negative sequence components in stand-alone operation of DFIGs has been proposed. Using the proposed methodology, the stator voltage is balanced and the torque pulsations, produced by the doublefrequency components in the currents and ux are eliminated. Experimental results have been presented that show the excellent performance achieved with the proposed control system. REFERENCES
[1] R. S. Pe a, G. M. Asher, and J. C. Clare, A doubly fed induction generator n using back-to-back PWM converters supplying an isolated load from a variable speed wind turbine, Inst. Electr. Eng. Proc.-Elect. Power Appl., vol. 143, no. 5, pp. 380387, Sep. 1996. [2] T. Brekken and N. Mohan, A novel doubly-fed induction generator control scheme for reactive power control and torque pulsation compensation under unbalanced grid voltage conditions, in Proc. 2004 Power Electron. Spec. Conf., Aachen, Germany, pp. 760764. [3] C. Hochgraf and R. H. Lasseter, Statcom controls for operation with unbalanced voltages, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 538 544, Apr. 1998. [4] D. Jovcic, Phase locked loop system for FACTS, IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 11161124, Aug. 2003.