• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.568-575
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• 2011

This paper proposes an application of energy storage devices (ESD) for low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) capability enhancement and power smoothening of doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbine systems. A grid-side converter (GSC) is used to maintain the DC-link voltage. Meanwhile, a machine-side converter (MSC) is used to control the active and reactive powers independently. For grid disturbances, the generator output power can be reduced by increasing the generator speed, resulting in an increased inertial energy of the rotational body. Design and control techniques for the energy storage devices are introduced, which consist of current and power control loops. Also, the output power fluctuation of the generator due to wind speed variations can be smoothened by controlling the ESD. The validity of the proposed method has been verified by PSCAD/EMTDC simulation results for a 2 MW DFIG wind turbine system and by experimental results for a small-scale wind turbine simulator.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1096-1103
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• 2014

This paper proposes a novel strategy for attenuating the output power fluctuation of the wind farm (WF) in a range of tens of seconds delivered to the grid, where the kinetic energy caused by the large inertia of the wind turbine systems is utilized. A control scheme of the two-level structure is applied to control the wind farm, which consists of a supervisory control of the wind farm and individual wind turbine controls. The supervisory control generates the output power reference of the wind farm, which is filtered out from the available power extracted from the wind by a low-pass filter (LPF). A lead-lag compensator is used for compensating for the phase delay of the output power reference compared with the available power. By this control strategy, when the reference power is lower than the maximum available power, some of individual wind turbines are operated in the storing mode of the kinetic energy by increasing the turbine speeds. Then, these individual wind turbines release the kinetic power by reducing the turbine speed, when the power command is higher than the available power. In addition, the pitch angle control systems of the wind turbines are also employed to limit the turbine speed not higher than the limitation value during the storing mode of kinetic energy. For coordinating the de-rated operation of the WT and the storing or releasing modes of the kinetic energy, the output power fluctuations are reduced by about 20%. The PSCAD/EMTDC simulations have been carried out for a 10-MW wind farm equipped with the permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) to verify the validity of the proposed method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.333-343
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• 2012

This paper proposes a strategy of flicker mitigation for doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbine systems. In the weak grid system where the grid impedance ratio is low, the reactive power compensation only cannot suppress the flicker sufficiently due to the limited power capacity of the converters or the DFIG. For the full suppression of flickers, the active power smoothening using the energy storage system (ESS) needs to be utilized together with the reactive power compensation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by PSCAD/EMTDC simulation results for a 2[MW] DFIG wind turbine system and by experimental results for a 3[kW] wind turbine simulator.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.733-738
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• 2010

This paper deals with a ride-through technique for permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) wind turbine systems using energy storage systems (ESS). A control strategy which consists of current and power control loops for the energy storage systems is proposed. By increasing the generator speed, some portion of the turbine power can be stored in the system inertia. Therefore, the required energy capacity of the ESS can be decreased, which results in a low-cost system. In addition, the power fluctuations due to wind speed variations can be smoothened by controlling the ESS appropriately. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified not only by the simulation results for a 2[MW] PMSG wind turbine system, but also by the experiment results for a reduced-scale turbine simulator.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.483-489
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• 2009

Electrolytic capacitors are used in variety of equipments as smoothening element of the power converters because it has high capacitance for its size and low price. Electrolytic capacitors, which is most of the time affected by aging effect, plays a very important role for the power electronics system quality and reliability. Therefore it is important to estimate the parameter of an electrolytic capacitor to predict the failure. This objective of this paper is to propose a new method to detect the rise of equivalent series resistor(ESR) in order to realize the online failure prediction of electrolytic capacitor for DC output filter of power converter. The ESR of electrolytic capacitor estimated from RMS result of filtered waveform(BPF) of the ripple capacitor voltage/current. Therefore, the preposed online failure prediction method has the merits of easy ESR computation and circuit simplicity. Simulation and experimental results are shown to verify the performance of the proposed on-line method.