Development and field tests of a damping controller to mitigate electromechanical oscillations on large diesel generating units

This paper presents the development and field tests of a digital damping controller designed to mitigate intra-plant electromechanical oscillations via the speed governor system of fast acting units. The controller performance is assessed on an 18-MVA diesel generating unit, at Santana Power Plant (Amapá State, Amazon Region at Northern Brazil). In order to design the damping control law, a set of parametric ARX models representing the plant dynamics at several load conditions, are previously identified from data collected on field tests. The damping controller gains are calculated by using the identified ARX models parameters as inputs to a discrete-time pole-placement design method (pole-shifting) and then embedded on a DSP based microcontroller digital system, for field tests assessment. The digital damping controller modulates the diesel engine inlet valve position according to the observed oscillation on the measured electric power, using a PWM device, which is specially developed to this application. The experimental results shown the good performance of the developed controller on damping efficiently the electromechanical oscillations observed between generating units at Santana Power Plant.