IECONO1: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

A cage induction generator using back to back PWM converters for variable speed grid connected wind energy system
Ruben Pefia Roberto Cardenas Ram6n Blasco Greg Asher Jon Clare
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. University of Nottingham University Park. NG7 2RD. Nottingham England
jon.clare@nottinaham.ac.uk

Department of Department of Electrical Engineering Electrical Engineering University of University of Magallanes Magallanes Casilla 113-D. Punta Casiilla 113-D. Punta Arenas Arenas Chile Chile r D e @ o n a . fi .u m a e.. c 1 &>on , a. fi .u ma e.. c 1

Department of System School of Electrical & Eng. And Automation Electronic Engineering. University of Polytechnic University Nottingham of Valencia University Park. NG'7 Camino de Vera, sln. 2RD. Nottingham Valencia Spain England
r b 1a sc o @,i sa. u ~ ve s . prea.asher@nottinaham.ac& .

Abstract: A new control scheme of a variable speed grid connected wind energy generation system is presented. The scheme uses a cage induction generator driven by an emulated wind turbine with tvvo back-to-back voltage-fed P W M inverters to interface the generator and the grid. The machine currents are controlled using an indirect vector control technique. The generator torque is controlled to drive the machine to the speed for maximum wind turbine aerodynamic efficiency. The sulpply side converter currents are also controlled using a vector approach using a reference frame aligned with stator voltage vector. The DC link voltage of the power electronics interface is controlled acting upon the supply active power current component using a non-linear control and a fuzzy based interpolation of linear PI controllers to improve the disturbance rejection and meet noise considerations in steady state. Experimental validation of the proposed control scheme on an emulated 3.2kW wind energy system is shown.

for a cage induction generator driven by a wind turbine and supplying energy to the grid via a power electronics interface. A strategy for optimum wind turbine speed tracking is presented and the DC link voltage of the power electronics interface is controlled using a non-linear approach together with a fuzzy logic based interpolation of linear PI controllers. Fig. 1 shows a schematic of the system..
A

(1 Gearbox

T
Fig. 1. Schematic of the overall system.

1. INTRODUCTION.

Squirrel cage induction motors are the most commonly used electrical machine in AC drives, because they are robust, cheap and have low maintenance cost. These advantages make the induction machine very attractive for wind power applications both for fixed and variable speed operation. To take advantage of the higher energy capture and increase in the system compliance resulting from variable speed operation a power electronic interface must be provided between the machine terminals and the grid. The back-to-back PWM inverter based power electronics interface is a suitable option for cage induction machine in wind power applications [11. Vector control techniques are used to control the machine currents allowing high current, and therefore torque, dynamics and control of the excitation or flux of the machine [2]. The supply side converter currents are also controlled using a vector control approach leading to an independent control of active and reactive power flow between the supply converter and the grid [3,4]. The power is therefore injected into the grid with low distortion currents and close to unity power factor. In a variable speed wind einergy system, below rated wind velocity, the electrical torque is controlled in order to drive the system into an optimum speed for maximum energy conversion [5,6]. In this paper a control strategy is presented

This paper is organised is follows. In section 2 a description of the experimental set up is presented, section 3 describes the vector control of the induction machine and the modelling of the wind turbine. In section 4 the DC link voltage control strategy for the supply side converter is presented. Section 5 shows experimental results and in section 6 some final remarks are given.
11. EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM

The system consists of two back-to-back PWM voltage fed inverters connected between a 2.5kW, 1450 rpm Cage Induction Generator (CIG) and the grid. The supply voltage has been set to 250V via a three phase variac. The DC link voltage is regulated at 550V providing enough modulation index excursion d&ng transients to avoid overmodulation problems. Three 12mH filter inductances are connected between the grid and the supply side converter. The switching frequency of the PWM converters is lkHz, the position is measured with a 10000 ppr. encoder. The sampling time of the current, voltages and position, as well as the voltage and current control loops is set to 0.5ms unless specified otherwise. Fig. 2 shows a schematic of the system. The generator is driven by a four-quadrant DC dnve emulating a wind turbine. For a given wind velocity and rotational speed a signal representing the wind turbine torque is obtained using a look up table of the wind turbine aerodynamics characteristics. This signal together with the electrical torque is used to generate a reference speed

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IECONOl: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

Fig. 2. Experimental set-up

signal for the DC drive, emulating a 3.2 kW wind turbine with given inertia and fiction coefficient [7,8]. The entire system is controlled using a microprocessornetwork [9] 111. INDUCTION MACHINE CONTROL AND WIND TURBINE OPTIMUM SPEED TRACKTNG. The CIG currents are controlled using a standard indirect vector control, with the current and voltages referred to a d-q synchronous frame aligned with the rotor flux vector [2]. The flux hd, and the electrical torque T, are given by:

T, = 0.5pCt (A)R3v2 c, (1)= At (4 c

Where h is the tip speed ratio defined by:

(3)

A=-OR
V

(4)

Fig. 3 shows a typical wind turbine power coefficient versus tip speed ratio.
c p 0.51

I 0.35 -

m m m
I I I I I
I

Where k, depends on the transformation used and isd isq, imrd are the d-q axis current and the magnetising current respectively. Lo, L, and T,. are the magnetising and stator selfinductances and the rotor time constant respectively. High bandwidth current control for the d-q stator component currents is achieved with the vector control approach. For below rated wind velocity, the mechanical power, P,, of a fixed-pitch wind turbine is a function of the effective wind velocity trough the blades v, the air density p, the ., blades radius R and the power coefficient C And is given by [61:

0.3 -

8 0.25;
0.15 o.2

m m m
m m m
,

0.11 0.05
O

***
X

**
,

:I
!

I I I

mmm;

10 Tip speed ratio

15

Fig. 3. Power coefficient versus tip speed ratio

P ,

= 0.5pCp(A)R2v3

(2)

Considering the rotational speed of the wind turbine o and the torque coefficient C, , the analytical expressions for the wind turbine mechanical torque is given by [6]:

Therefore, the rotational speed for maximum aerodynamic efficiency for a given wind velocity is given by:

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IECONO1: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
The mechanical torque at the optimum operating speed is given by: front-end converter control strategy is to keep the DC link voltage E constant. It can be shown that the dynamic for the DC link voltage E, under vector control and power factor near to unity, is:

In this work, a first order model has been used to describe the dynamic of the wind turbine given by:

C dE2 -k(Vdid - - - - Rdiid ) - P o. 2 L, , z 2 dt 2 dt Po = Ei,

(1 1)

dw J -= T, - T, - BU dt

(7) Where id is the d-axis power current component, L1 and R1 are the line filter parameters, C is the DC link voltage capacitor and vd is the supply voltage in d-q co-ordinates and k is a constant which depends on the transformation used. The effect of RI can be neglected and LI is usually small. The term R,i: is always positive and 0.5L,pi: is bounded, hence this simplification does not affect stability of the closed loop system. The id current is used to regulate the DC link voltage. However, the relationship between E and id is non-linear. By choosing E as the controlled variable equation (1 1) becomes:

Where J is the system inertia, T, is the electrical torque and B the friction torque coefficient. By setting T,, and the reference is, current as:

T, = K o p 2, - B o ~

The mechanical equation becomes:

J -du,= T,
dt

-K

o p2 ~ l

(9)
Because of the generally unknown generating conditions the generated power Po is considered as a disturbance for the DC link control loop. In order to have good DC link voltage regulation, hence fast disturbance rejection, high open loop gains are required. However, such high gains will cause increased DC link voltage noise and, consequently, AC current ripple. In this work a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) [lo] is used to continuously change the bandwidth of the voltage controller by interpolating between several linear PI controllers. The strategy is as follows: Consider a digital linear PI controller described by:

Therefore, the accelerating torque is equal to the difference between the turbine: mechanical torque and the torque at optimum C,. Eventually the machine will reach the optimum operating point. Equation (7) and Fig. 3 are used to emulate the wind turbine via a four-quadrant speed controlled DC drive. The reference speed for the DC drive is given by:

Where T, is the sampling time of the DC drive speed control loop, set to 5ms, and J and B are the emulated system inertia and the torque friction c.oefficient respectively. For a given wind velocity, the wind turbine mechanical torque is obtained using the wind turbine parameters, given in the Appendix, together with the knowledge of the system speed and a look-up table of the torque coefficient versus the tip speed ratio, obtained from Fig 3. IV.SUPPLY SIDE CONVERTER CONTROL STRATEGY. The supply side converter in Fig.1 is used injects the generated power into the grid. By using vector control techniques the currents in the ac side of the converter are controlled with very high bandwidth. The orientation of the reference frame is done along the supply voltage vector to obtain a decoupled control of the active and reactive power. Usually the reactive power connponent current is set to zero for near unity power factor operation. The main aim of the

AupI = K,e(k)

- K p a e ( k -- 1)

(13)

This controller can be implemented using a Sugeno type structure [ 111, with two memhership functions, NEG and POS, for both e@) and e@-I), with

e(k) = ( E Z ( k ) - E ( k ) )/ k, , Eref the reference voltage

and kl a scaling factor for ensuring the membership domain lies between +1. The control signal

le(k)l= /Erg(k)- E(k - 1)1/ k , ,with k, again a scaling factor,

is used for the linear interpolation. In this work three PI controllers are considered with three membership functions for the control signal le(k)l, S(Small), M(Medium) and B(Big), corresponding to small, medium and big DC link voltage error. The input membership functions are shown in Fig. 4. The rule base is shown in Tahle 1, where kpi and ai are the proportional gain and zero of the i-th PI controller respectively (i=l,2,3).

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IECON'O1: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

small; however the voltage excursion is above 50V. Fig. 6 shows the DC link voltage performance for the same load impact with the faster PI controller. The disturbance rejection is very good with a maximum excursion of the DC link voltage of about 20V, however the noise in the d-axis current is noticeable Fig. 7 shows the performance of the proposed fuzzy based DC link voltage controller with a linear interpolation of PI controllers, for the same load impacts. As seen from Fig. 7 the voltage regulation is also good, with a maximum excursion of 22V, but the steady state noise in the d-axis reference current is kept very low. The controller has low closed loop bandwidth for small voltage errors, in order to keep reduced noise, and high bandwidth for high errors hence excellent load impact rejection is maintained.

Fig. 4. Input membership functions

TABLA 1 . Rule base

0.5
Time(s)
I

1
!

1.5

2 8r

g-2
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS. The proposed control strategies have been experimentally validated using the experimental set up shown in Fig. 2.

py
O

b 1 1 Time(s) 1.5

&

0.5

Fig. 5. Dc link voltage performance with a slow PI controller

A . Experimental Results for the DC Link Voltage Control Strategy.

The disturbance rejection performance of the DC link voltage controller has been tested against load impacts using a chopper controlled resistive load connected to the DC link. Three DC link voltage PI controllers have been implemented with closed loop natural frequencies of wl=20radi', ~ = 6 0 r a d i ' ,%=120rad" respectively, the DC link voltage being regulated at 550V. As seen from Fig. 4, the high bandwidth controller is used for large DC link voltage excursions, while the low bandwidth controller reduces system noise under steady state conditions. A 2.5kW load impact has been applied to the DC link at t=O.ls and disconnected at e 0 . 9 ~ . Fig. 5 shows the disturbance rejection performance of the slowest PI controller. The top graphic shows the DC link voltage and the bottom graphic shows the d-axis reference current. The noise in the d-axis reference current is quite 0-7803-71 08-9/01/$10.00 (C)200 1 IEEE 1379

0.5
Time(s)

1.5

Timefs)
Fig. 6. DC link voltage disturbance rejection with a fast controller.

IECON'O1: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

seen form this figure, the tracking error increase because of the higer inertia of the system.

C 520 l

LA 0.5 1 1.5
0

50

'g 200
v

400

100 Time(s)

150

% -200
CL

GY -400

Time(s)
Fig. 7. DC link voltage performance with the proposed h z z y controller

50

100 Time(s)

150

Fig. 9 Speed tracking with a higher inertia system.

B. Experimental Results for the Wind Turbine System.

The performance of the optimum wind turbine speed tracking operation is shown in Figures 8 and 9 for realistic wind profiles. In order to demonstrate the wind turbine emulation scheme, two diffeirent wind turbines have been considered. Fig 8 shows the speed tracking performance for a wind turbine system with an nnertia of lkgm' and a friction coefficient of B=O.O02NmsraCT'. The top graphics shows the system rotational speed whereas the bottom graphics shows the speed error. The speed c:rror has been obtained using considering the optimum speed operation given by (4)

Finally, Fig.10 shows the steady state phase voltage V, and supply current injected into the grid I, when the system is operating at optimum speed with a wind velocity of
8.3mls.

The q-axis supply reference: current has been set to zero, therefore the phase angle between the phase voltage and the current is nearly 180'.
200 I

0
h

50
O O -

100 Time(s)
1

I50
-150

-1J
0

- -8
0.01
0.02

-200

0.03

0.04

0.05

'-10

0.06

Erne@.) Fig. IO. Supply current and phase voltage for wind velocity of 8 . 3 d s

*A -400 ,
0

50

100 Time(s)

150

VI. FINAL REMARKS.

A new control system for a variable-speed cage induction generator driven by wind turbine has been presented. Two back-to-back voltage fed vector controlled inverters have been used to interface the generator and the grid. The DC link voltage is controlled using a fuzzy based controller. The controller output is a fuzzy based interpolation of different PI controllers. Experimental results have shown high dynamic

Fig. 8, Speed tracking for a system with small inertia.

Fig. 9 shows the performance of the speed trackmg strategy with an emulated wind energy system having an inertia of Skgm'. The top graphic shows the speed and the bottom graphic shows the speed tracking error. As can be

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IECONO1: The 27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

response for DC link disturbance rejection while keeping the steady state control signal noise, i.e. the supply active current component, very low. The wind turbine has been emulated using a speed controlled DC drive. The strategy is very flexible allowing different wind turbines to be emulated with minimum software modifications. Experimental results for tracking the optimum operating speed of the wind turbine system have been presented for two different wind turbine using a realistic wind profile. Experimental results have also shown the operation of the system with low distortion currents injected into the grid with close-to-unity power factor. VI1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The financial support provided by Fondecyt, through projects 1980688 and 7980077, is kindly acknowledged. The financial support from The British Council via The Academic Link Program is also acknowledged. VI11 REFERENCES. Jones S.R., Jones R., A Control Strategy for Sinusoidal Supply Side Converters, IEE Colloquium n on Developments i Real Time Control for Induction Motor Drives, DIGEST No. 1993/024, 1993. Leonhard W, Control of Electrical Drives, Spring Verlag 1985. Rim C T., et al, A complete DC and AC Analysis of Three-phase Current PWM Rectifier Using d-q Transformation, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, Vol. 9, NO.4, 1994, pp. 390-396. Zargary N, Joos G, Performance Investigation of a Current-controlled Voltage-regulated PWM Rectifier in Rotating and Stationary Frames, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 42, No. 4, 1995, pp. 396401. Buchring J K, Freris L, Control Policies for Windenergy conversion Systems, IEE Proc. C., Vol. 128, NO. 5, 1981, pp 253-261. Freris L., Wind Energy Conversion Systems, Prentice Hall, 1990.

[7] Z. Hakan, G. Asher, J. Clare, Dynamic Emulation of Mechanical Loads Using a Vector-Controlled Induction Motor-Generator Set, IEEE Transaction on Industrial Electronics, Vol46, Nr. 2 April 1999. [8] R. Cardenas, R. Peiia, G.M. Asher, J.C. Clare, Experimental emulation of wind turbines and flywheels for wind energy applications, European Power Electronics and Applications Conference, EPE200 1, Graz Austria, August 200 1, CD ROM [9] R. Peiia, J.C. Clare, G.M. Asher, A doubly fed induction generator using back to back PWM converters and its application to variable speed wind energy generation, IEE-Proceeding part B (Electric Power and Applications),pp. 231-241. May 1996. [10]D. Driankov, H. Hellendoom, M. Reinsrank, An Introduction to Fuzzy Control, Springer-Verlag, 1993. [l 11Hakan A., Asher G., Clare J., Equivalence of fuzzy and classical controller: An approach to fuzzy control design. EPE99, Lausanne. Switzerland. 1999. APPENDIX. Wind Turbine: Power 3.2kW, Blade radius R =2.26m Rated speed=296rpm Rated wind velocity=10mi Gearbox = 2.836 Cage Induction Machine: Rated speed: 1450rpm Rated field current Id=l.8A, Rated torque = 4.6A R=2.lQ Rr=l.7R LS=0.4186H,Lo=0.4058H, Lr=0.4186H. Inverters: Power: 5kW Switching fiequency: lkHz DC link Capacitor: 1200p.F

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