VSC Fault Protection

Voltage Source Converter Fault Protection(VSC) The objective is to design and test a power system protection scheme that combines voltage and possible measurements from different locations in or near a wind farm to locate faults. A brand new method to detect the fault before it occures.

Project Statement
The objective is to design and test a power system protection scheme that combines voltage and possible measurements from different locations in or near a wind farm to locate faults. A brand new method to detect the fault before it occures.

Project Learning
Some of the shelf technologies that we will use are the following:
 * Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) -- The Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) is a special purpose computer that does time domain simulation solving the differential equations for a power system at discrete instants in time, 50 microseconds apart, and doing analog or digital I/O to external protection and control devices in real time. Such that the external devices don't know they are talking to a simulation instead of a real system.
 * RSCAD -- A graphical interface intended to be used in conjunction with RTDS.
 * PSCAD -- A non-real time graphical interface program that is the forerunner to RSCAD.

Type 3 WTG & Type 4 WTG

 * For the Wind Turbine Generator (WTG):
 * 1. WTG is either Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine or Squirrel Cage Induction Machine.
 * 2. Connect to AC/AC converter.
 * 3. Control system for converter by inner control loop and outer control loop.
 * 4. Connect to Delta-to-Wye Transformer to the AC Grid.



Faults
There are two main types of faults: symmetrical ones and unymmetrical ones.
 * What are Faults?
 * 1) An electrical fault is an abnormal defect in an electrical system caused by equipment failures, human errors, and/or environmental incidents.
 * Types of Faults
 * Symmetrical – a balanced three phase fault
 * Three Phase Ground Faults (Line-Line-Line-Ground Fault/LLLG) - 2-5%of the time
 * Three Phase Faults (Line-Line-Line Fault/LLL) - 2-5%of the time


 * Unsymmetrical – does not affect all three phases
 * Line-To-Line Faults (LL) - 5-10% of the time
 * Single-Line-To-Ground Faults (SLG) - 65-70% of the time
 * Double-Line-Ground Faults (DLG) - 15-20% of the time

Specifications of Project

 * Negligible fault impedance
 * Transposed Lines
 * Single Line to Ground (SLG)
 * Double Line to Ground (DLG)

System Diagrams
The system diagram of type 4 wind turbine generator shows it is providing mechanical power to a permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM). This then provides electrical power to a diode bridge rectifier to convert AC to DC. Then the power will flow through a D0 link and then convert DC back to AC through the active Pulse-width modulation(PWM) VSC. This output will go through a transformer and then to the AC grid. A squirrel cage induction machine can also be used in place of the PMSM.

Engineering Modeling
The projects model was built in RTDS for both the diode bridge rectifier and the Neutral Point Clamped Converter (NPC). The diode bridge rectifier is used to rectify the AC input from the generator to a DC output. To convert DC back to a source of AC that the power grid can use, the active grid side voltage converter (NPC) is used.

On top of the power electronics models implemented above, a controller was designed, by Shashidhar Reddy Sathu, to generate the modulating functions for the three phase legs based on real and reactive power set points. Below are the outer control loop and inner control loop.

Outer control Loop


The outer control loop was created for determining Id and Iq reference values from the set point values for real and reactive power. In the case of a wind turbine, the output power from the generator is hard to determine correctly and the Id reference value needs to follow the generator output, otherwise the energy gets dumped into the capacitor and raises the DC bus voltage and could damage the power electronic devices. In another case, if the power input falls and the inverter supplies more AC power than is coming into the DC link, the voltage will fall as the capacitor gets drained and the system will not be able to maintain the voltage at the inverter terminals. This control loop was implemented to vary the exported ac power with the change in input and is based on regulating the DC link voltage.

Inner control Loop


The inner control loop generates modulating waves for all three phases for the use in switching functions. The Id and Iq reference values are compared with the processed measured values. The controller determines the voltage that has to be supplied to the terminals to drive the current corresponding to the reference values. The control is done in the synchronous dq0 reference frame and has to be transformed back into the ABC reference frame to generate the modulating waves for the three phases.

PSCAD Design

 * Three Phase Simulation

Result
After modelling, here, we use the Single Line Ground (SLG) fault waveform as an example. And we set the fault occur between 0.55 sec to 0.9 sec. Normally, when the fault occurred, as the voltage drop down, the current will go up to incredibility high, that will absolutely damage the whole transmission line system. However, if we use the system we consider to protect it when faults occur, then this extreme situation will not happen.

As you can see, through the fault duration, although the fault occurred, and the voltage drop to 0, the current still not change so much, that is why we could protect our transmission line system.

With the feedback loop, with the modulation signal to control our system voltage and current, the fluctuations due to the faults are not particularly large. Take the modulation signal waveform as an example, even when the fault occur, the change of waveform is still slightly.

Deign Summary
Through our project, we implement a type 4 WTG in PSCAD and utilize the terminal and source voltage depressions as information to determine a fault type and phase while regulating the source current to the grid.

To do this we modulated the signal by converting the three-phase system to a two-axis system (DQ0). To properly determine the fault, we created this system in both the stationary and the synchronous reference frames. Moving to the stationary reference frame we used the Clarke's transform and a control diagram found in Voltage-Sourced Converters' textbook. A similar procedure for the synchronous frame was used, except we used Park's transform.

By doing this we were able to see the effects of a fault in the system and determined that we can use set points on time stamped PMU’s (Phasor Measurement Unit) to locate the fault.

Next step
1.Test ideas in RTDS lab. 2.Transmission implementation with low impedance fault. 3.Future research with untransposed lines and high fault impedance. 4.Economic analysis of implementation of PMUs.