A Fault-Tolerant PMSG Drive for Wind Turbine Applications With Minimal Increase of the Hardware Requirements

Fault-tolerant permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) drives for wind turbine applications play a major role in improving reliability and availability levels, since power converters are very prone to fail. In this paper, a fault-tolerant converter with the ability to handle power switch open-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industry applications 2014-05, Vol.50 (3), p.2039-2049
Main Authors: Freire, Nuno M. A., Marques Cardoso, Antonio J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capacitors
Circuit faults
Converters
Fault tolerance
Fault tolerant systems
Hardware
Minimization
Motors
Optimization
permanent magnet machines
Ripples
Switches
Topology
Voltage control
wind power generation
Wind turbines
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Summary:Fault-tolerant permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) drives for wind turbine applications play a major role in improving reliability and availability levels, since power converters are very prone to fail. In this paper, a fault-tolerant converter with the ability to handle power switch open-circuit faults is addressed. The main concern of the proposed converter topology is the minimization of the hardware requirements, leading to a low increase of the system cost. First, the employed fault diagnostic technique does not require additional measurements, nor high computational effort. Secondly, the circuit topology reconfiguration implies a minimum number of extra components as well as minimal oversizing of the standard ones. Accordingly, a four-switch three-phase converter with the dc bus midpoint connected to the transformer neutral point and a three-switch three-phase rectifier are adopted for post-fault operation of the grid- and PMSG-side converters, respectively. Vector control strategies are proposed for both converters under analysis, focusing the issues of capacitor voltages balancing and torque ripple minimization. The performance of the proposed fault-tolerant PMSG drive is analyzed by means of experimental results.
ISSN:0093-9994
1939-9367
DOI:10.1109/TIA.2013.2282935