A fault-tolerant multiphase permanent magnet generator for marine current turbine applications

Abstract

Abstract-Tidal currents are being recognized as a resource for sustainable electrical power generation. However, the main challenge for marine current energy development is to minimize the operation costs and maintenance operations in the marine harsh environment. These worries are justified by the incident high rates on offshore wind turbine systems. Marine current turbines are characterized by a very difficult access for regular or emergency maintenance operations. This is why the development of fault tolerant system is a key feature. This paper deals with the use of a PM multiphase marine current turbine generator. With this kind of system, it is possible to maintain the power production even if an electrical fault appears in the power converter. This system is associated with an optimal strategy of torque/speed control using a high-order sliding mode control which is particularly adapted to the healthy or faulty operation mode.

2002–2012: 10 Years of Research Progress in Horizontal-Axis Marine Current Turbines

“…Ben Elghali and co-workers from France have been actively involved in research on HAMCT generator performance since 2007 [19,[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112]. They started by developing a Matlab-Simulink model to model the marine current energy [19] and step-by-step, they validated the developed model for different generator-based HAMCTs.…”

“…They started by developing a Matlab-Simulink model to model the marine current energy [19] and step-by-step, they validated the developed model for different generator-based HAMCTs. They have simulated the performance of doubly-fed induction generators (DFIGs) [103,106], permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) [109,110], modified DFIGs and PMSGs [105,107,108] and comparisons between DFIGs and PMSGs [109,111]. It was not until 2011 that Ben Elghali and co-workers started to conduct experiments and validate the control systems they had proposed.…”

“…They extended the PMSG by introducing the second-order sliding mode control that takes into consideration the turbulence and swell effects of marine current flow [108]. In addition, it was shown that multiphase PMSGs could help in maintaining the power output of HAMCTs, even when there is an electrical fault in the power converter [109,110]. Recently, they fabricated a rim-driven prototype HAMCT with a radial permanent magnet generator for experimental purposes to test the actual performance of the control system proposed by them.…”

Fault-Tolerant Control Performance Comparison of Three- and Five-Phase PMSG for Marine Current Turbine Applications

“…Indeed, multiphase generators offer additional degrees of freedom that can be used for fault-tolerant operation. In fact, under fault conditions, their remaining healthy phases can be used to compensate the faults and continue the MCT operation [15][16][17][18].…”

“…This comparison is carried-out under normal and faulty operation conditions [15][16]. The generator performances are evaluated using an MCT simulator environment which has been previously developed [3].…”