Short circuit fault analysis in a grid connected DFIG based wind energy system with active crowbar protection circuit for ridethrough capability and power quality improvement

In power industry, improvement of the short circuit Fault-ride through (FRT) capability of grid integrated Doubly Fed Induction Generators (DFIGs) for the wind power system is an important issue. In this paper an Active Crowbar Protection (ACB_P) system is proposed to enhance the Fault-ride through (FRT) capability of DFIG so as to improve the power quality of the system. The protection scheme proposed here is designed with a capacitor in series with the resistor unlike the conventional Crowbar (CB) having only resistors. The importance of ACB_P is to maintain the connection of DFIG with the grid during fault conditions to provide uninterruptable power supply to the loads. The major functions of the capacitor in the protection circuit are to eliminate the ripples generated in the rotor current and to protect the converters as well as the DC-link capacitor. The main objectives of the proposed approach are: minimisation of magnitude of rotor fault currents, maintenance of constant DC-link voltage, reduction in crowbar operation time to avoid disconnection between the DFIG and the Rotor side converter (RSC), improvement in the short circuit response of terminal voltage and enhancement in the dynamic responses of the DFIG. These objectives are achieved through the incorporation of ACB_P scheme between the rotor of the DFIG and RSC. The proposed scheme is validated on different types of fault conditions and it is observed that there is significant improvement in the objectives. Simulation results are carried out on a 1.7 MVA DFIG based WECS under different types of short circuit faults in MATLAB/Simulation and functionality of the proposed scheme is verified.