Fault-Tolerant, Low-Cost Power Conversion And Control For Variable-Speed Generators

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Wind Energy)
Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electric power conversion)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor L Ran
School of Engineering
University of Warwick

Standard

EPSRC

25 April 2005

24 April 2008

36 months

£226,473

Electrical engineering

West Midlands

Systems -- Materials, Mechanical and Medical Eng

Professor L Ran, School of Engineering, University of Warwick

Dr JR Bumby, Engineering, Durham University

Project Contact, New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC)
Project Contact, Evolving Generation Ltd

Until recently, the vast majority of electrical generators were fixed-speed synchronous or occasionally induction machines. The benefits of variable speed operation for many types of prime movers and the availability of electronic frequency converters have created a new market for generating systems that can deliver power to the grid whilst turning at any speed. Gearless direct drive wind turbines have been at the leading edge of this development and continue to set the most demanding requirements. With the present drive to install large numbers of wind turbines offshore, new demands for reliability arise for every component including the frequency converter. While significant progress is being achieved in semiconductor devices, converter topologies and switching strategies, there is clearly a need also to consider the converter together with the generator to create an integrated design that combines good performance with low cost. The proposed project aims to provide a low-cost modular power conversion system with extensive fault tolerance features for variable speed generators with multiple isolated electrical output coils. It aims to develop the circuit topology needed for such a scheme and to develop appropriate control and protection algorithms. It is intended to take advantage of the unusual nature of multi-pole low-speed generators, which have a large number of winding coils that can easily be arranged to provide a number of electrically independent outputs. Thisfeature lends itself to a modular multi-level high-voltage converter configuration. It is intended to achieve a transformer-less configuration while providing the capability to ride through grid faults

01/01/07