Fault Diagnosis of a Voltage-Fed PWM Inverter for a Three-parallel Power Conversion System in a Wind Turbine

Abstract

In this paper, a fault diagnosis method based on fuzzy logic for the three-parallel power converter in a wind turbine system is presented. The method can not only detect both open and short faults but can also identify faulty switching devices without additional voltage sensors or an analysis modeling of the system. The location of a faulty switch can be indicated by six-patterns of a stator current vector and the fault switching device detection is achieved by analyzing the current vector. A fault tolerant algorithm is also presented to maintain proper performance under faulty conditions. The reliability of the proposed fault detection technique has been proven by simulations and experiments with a 10kW simulator.