Abstract
Although Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) wind turbines (WTs) mitigate gearbox impacts, they requires high reliability of generators and converters. Statistical analysis shows that the failure rate of direct-drive PMSG wind turbines’ generators and inverters are high. Intelligent fault diagnosis algorithms to detect inverters faults is a premise for the condition monitoring system aimed at improving wind turbines’ reliability and availability. The influences of random wind speed and diversified control strategies lead to challenges for developing intelligent fault diagnosis algorithms for converters. This paper studies open-circuit fault features of wind turbine converters in variable wind speed situations through systematic simulation and experiment. A new fault diagnosis algorithm named Wind Speed Based Normalized Current Trajectory is proposed and used to accurately detect and locate faulted IGBT in the circuit arms. It is compared to direct current monitoring and current vector trajectory pattern approaches. The results show that the proposed method has advantages in the accuracy of fault diagnosis and has superior anti-noise capability in variable wind speed situations. The impact of the control strategy is also identified. Experimental results demonstrate its applicability on practical WT condition monitoring system which is used to improve wind turbine reliability and reduce their maintenance cost.
Highlights
Improving wind turbine (WT) reliability is crucial for reducing the cost of wind energy
To fully understand the challenge of WT converter fault diagnosis, this paper firstly studies their impacts of wind speed and control scheme on converter fault diagnosis through a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) WT
This paper secondly proposed a new fault diagnosis method namely Wind Speed Based Normalized Current Trajectory (WSBNCT) for WT PMSG machine-side converter open-circuit fault diagnosis
Summary
Improving wind turbine (WT) reliability is crucial for reducing the cost of wind energy. A variety of techniques are applied to detect open-circuit faults, which are reviewed in [6,7] A parameter quantifying the errors of the normalized results is defined to detect single or multiple converter failures Another Park’s Vector based fault diagnosis approach is through identifying three phase current signature patterns [8]. Transient loads due to fast wind variation and turbulence, abrupt torque changes due to WT response both cause complexity of converter fault diagnosis of WTs. current diagnostic methods proposed for generator-side converters of WT considering the transient wind speed variation and control system impacts are rare. This paper secondly proposed a new fault diagnosis method namely Wind Speed Based Normalized Current Trajectory (WSBNCT) for WT PMSG machine-side converter open-circuit fault diagnosis. Such a method is evaluated and summarized in terms of its capability and robustness for accurate fault diagnosis under noisy variable wind conditions
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