Design of a Combined Screening and Damping Layer for a 10-MW-Class Wind Turbine HTS Synchronous Generator

Abstract

This paper is focused on the design of a single protection layer to cover both the screening and damping characteristics of a large-scale high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wind turbine synchronous generator under sudden short-circuit conditions. Due to small synchronous reactance of HTS generators, short-circuit condition causes substantial fault current in the stator windings, which produces high unbalance variable magnetic field as well as substantial mechanical fluctuations issues. The former one can lead to unstable condition for HTS field windings, due to induced ac loss and field overcurrent, and the latter one can produce large fluctuations on the generator rotational speed and rotor torque angle. The proposed protection layer is designed in a way that not only screening capability is provided for the HTS windings by preventing unbalance magnetic field penetration, but desirable damping ratio is also achieved so that the fluctuations are suppressed in a proper transient time. A 10-MW-class HTS synchronous generator is modeled and simulated using finite element method under different short-circuit conditions. The temperature variation study and field overcurrent analysis are provided to show the compatibility of the proposed model. In addition, magnetic force distribution and static eccentricity fault detection analyses are provided, which guarantee the proper dynamic performance of the studied generator using the proposed protection layer. Simulation results confirm that with the proposed protection layer, both the screening and damping characteristics of the 10-MW-class HTS generator are obtained and proper transient dynamic responses are deduced for wind power applications.