Study of a grid-connected hybrid wind/micro-hydro power system

Stefan BREBAN1,2, Mehdi NASSER2, Arnaud VERGNOL2, Vincent COURTECUISSE2, Benot ROBYNS2, Mircea M. RADULESCU1
Special Electric Motors and Light Electric Traction (SEMLET) Group Technical University of Cluj-Napoca P.O. Box 345, RO-400110 Cluj-Napoca 1, Romania, E-mail: mircea.radulescu@mae.utcluj.ro (2) Laboratoire dElectrotechnique et dElectronique de Puissance de Lille (L2EP) Ecole des Hautes Etudes dIngnieur (HEI) 13, rue de Toul, F-59046 Lille Cedex, France E-mail: benoit.robyns@hei.fr Abstract This paper reports on experimental results for a hybrid wind/micro hydro power system connected to the grid. It comprises, on one side, a doubly-fed induction generator linked mechanically and electrically (through back-to-back power electronic converters in the rotor circuit) to a permanentmagnet synchronous machine, which may recover or supply the slip power, and, on the other side, a fixedspeed wind generator driven by a squirrel-cage induction generator. Simulations in Matlab/ SimulinkTM environment for two supervisory strategies of the hybrid power system under study are also presented. I. INTRODUCTION The interest for renewable energies rises all around the globe. Following the Kyoto protocol signed in December 1997, the vast majority of countries agreed to reduce the degree of polluting agents responsible for climate changes. This decision presumes to reduce the use of coal, oil and natural gas in energy production processes, and replace them with renewable energy conversion systems as, for example, small hydropower plants or wind power units. This two energy sources have yet a great potential of development being the only capable to compete with the classical thermal power stations. Hydroelectricity is the most expanded renewable energy source over the world. It represents almost 94% of the renewable energy production and 20 % of worldwide power needs. In fact, this is due to high power hydroelectric stations, which have been built for approximately one century, each of them producing several hundreds of Megawatts. Nowadays, it is no more possible to set up such a plant in most European and North-American countries because of suitable site rareness and environmental concerns. Nonetheless substantial capacities remain in Africa, Asia and South America. Micro hydropower has a quite large potential of development because of the increasing interest in renewable energies and dispersed electrical generation.
(1)

This type of hydroelectricity ranges from 0 to 10 MW in Europe where, without accounting for newly integrated countries, the micro-hydro capacity is over 11500 MW, representing 1.7 % in electricity production capacity and 10% of hydroelectric power. The European growth potential reaches about 6000 MW [1]. Micro hydropower stations are nowadays based on a fixed-speed synchronous machine or a squirrel-cage induction generator. In both configurations, no use is made of power electronic devices. In the first case, speed is necessary fixed; in the second one, speed may vary in a small range according to active power demand changes, if the station is grid-connected, or the additional capacitor and load equivalent impedance variations, if the asynchronous machine supplies a passive network, i.e. the station is islanded. For both generators, the turbine rate of flow regulation allows supplying the necessary active power, and to control the frequency when the station is connected to isolated loads. The wind generators are in the same power limits as micro hydropower plants. The produced power is variable and not easily predictable from one day to another. On the contrary, micro-hydro stations can be considered as constant-power producing units. Water rate of flow is considered constant for a small to medium interval of time, and variations are often seasonal. Micro hydro demonstrates its ability to complement itself with the wind generators and compensate the wind power fluctuations. Theoretical premises on this subject are presented in [2] and [3]. II. POWER SYSTEM UNDER STUDY Fig. 1 shows the micro-hydro power station associated to a fixed-speed wind generator considered in this study. The variable-speed hydro power plant allows to compensate and to smooth the fluctuating wind power when connected to grid. This is shown experimentally, in this paper, by means of a 3 kW laboratory test bench able to emulate a grid-connected hybrid wind/micro-hydro power system.

Variable-Speed Micro Hydropower Station

PMSM

Bus

DFIG

PWM 1

PWM 2

Power Grid Fixed-Speed Wind Generator

IG

Fig. 1. The grid-connected hybrid wind/micro-hydro system under study. 1) Variable-speed micro-hydro plant The micro hydropower station is considered as a runof-river one, leading to the use of a Kaplan hydraulic turbine well suited for low water heads. The turbine is associated with a gear-box because of its small rotating speed. It drives a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) whose excitation is supplied on its rotor by a permanentmagnet synchronous machine (PMSM) mounted on the same shaft. Two back-to-back PWM power electronic converters, connected through a DC bus, carry out the electric link between the machines. Converter 1 controls the DC-link voltage, leading to the balance between the DFIG-rotor active power and the PMSM one. Converter 2 is dedicated to the control of the DFIG, in order to achieve operation of this generator on isolated loads and on a power grid ([4], [5], [6]). It may be emphasized that the considered configuration is different from most common DFIGs, whose rotor windings are connected, ever through power electronic converters, to stator ones. This electromechanical set, when compared to classical structures used in micro hydroelectric power plants, features several interesting characteristics, i.e. it can operate in an autonomous way due to the PMSM allowing the DC-link capacitor stand-alone charging when the system starts; power electronic converters increase the plant control possibilities (e.g. additional capacitors used in squirrel-cage induction machines are no more necessary), and dynamics, as they replace mechanical controls; converter and PMSM rated powers are only around 30% of the plant rated power, representing the typical average slip power [7]. References [4] and [5] develop the structured model of the system connected to power network, where the DFIG active and reactive powers are controlled. 2) Hydro power turbine model As mentioned above, a Kaplan turbine is considered in this paper. It is referred to a fixed head and a constant water flow. It is assumed that water flow variations are very slow compared to the drive dynamics. The turbine model is a basic one, i.e. it includes neither blade pitch control nor upstream guide vane one. According to these assumptions, hydro-power turbine behaviour may be taken into account by means of simplified static mechanical characteristics represented in Fig.2 for a fixed rate of flow. Turbine torque (Tt) vs. speed () characteristic is assumed to be a straight line. Torque becomes null for a rotating speed value e which is the runaway speed, i.e. speed when no-load torque is applied on the shaft. e is a turbine parameter, and a value of 1.8 times the turbine rated speed n is assumed [4]. Torque vs. speed characteristic equation under rated water flow and head is given next:

Tt = Tn 1.8 n

(1).

where subscript "n" is used for rated values. Mechanical power (Pmec) simplified characteristic is, consequently, a parabola. Taking into account the water wheel efficiency depending on the rate of flow and on the rotating speed, this power results from the hydro power (Phyd ) which is expressed as follows:

Phyd = gHq
Torque

(2)
Mechanical power

n
Rotating speed

Fig.2. Hydro power turbine torque and mechanical power vs.rotating speed, for given water flow.

Fig. 3. Power coefficient.

where is the water density, g, the gravity acceleration, H, the water head and q, the water rate of flow. 3) Fixed-speed wind generator For the fixed-speed turbine, the induction generator (IG) is directly connected to the power grid, according to Fig. 1. The squirrel-cage induction generator is a 4-pole machine, and the necessary reactive power for its magnetisation is absorbed from the network. The shaft mechanical power is assumed to follow the Cp() curve shown in Fig. 3, where Cp is the power coefficient, and is the speed ratio. III. SIMULATION OF THE POWER SYSTEM Simulations are carried out using the Matlab/ SimulinkTM software. A 300 kW run-of-river micro hydropower station referred to fixed water head and flow is considered. The system is based on a 4-pole DFIG and a Kaplan turbine, whose speed parameters are : e = 455 rpm and n = 253 rpm. The gearbox ratio is adjusted, so that the reduced synchronous speed is 350 rpm. The nominal power of the wind power system is also 300 kW. In Fig. 4, the power produced by the wind power plant for a strong wind is presented. The hydro plant has very good dynamics, and succeeds in compensating the wind power variations (Fig. 5). The reference total active power (Fig. 6) has been established according to wind power generation and hydropower stations availability. Fig. 6 demonstrates the ability of the hybrid drive to deliver a constant power into the grid.
Fig. 6. Total active power delivered into the grid.

In Figs. 7 to 9, an optimised supervisory strategy is presented. There are considered two wind generators and only one hydropower plant. An optimization algorithm was developed in order to increase to its maximum the power delivered, but also to maintain it relatively smooth [8]. The optimization function in (3) introduces two coefficients and ; is responsible for maximizing the total power delivered to the grid, whereas , for smoothing the power. F ( xi ) = * E (u ) + * V (u ) (3)

E (u ) = 1 M ( x + y )

(4)

(5) u = x+ y M: medium power delivered; xi : variable (hydro-plant reference power at time i); x : hydro-plant measured power from 1 to i-1 plus xi; y : wind measured power from 1 to i. The power produced by the two wind generators and the active power produced by the micro-hydro power station are shown in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. The optimization algorithm allows obtaining a relatively smooth total power (Fig. 9). IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The test bench for power generation, available at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes dIngnieur (HEI), Lille, France, has been developed for several years to carry out studies on the control of wind generators, micro hydropower plants, kinetic energy storage systems etc.

V (u ) = M [( x + y ) 2 ] [ M ( x + y )]2

Fig. 4. Fixed-speed wind generator active power.

Fig. 5. Micro hydropower plant active power.

Fig. 7. Fixed-speed wind generators active power.

Fig.8. Micro-hydro plant active power.

Fig. 9. Total active power delivered into the grid.

For hydro power concerns, the bench is composed of a hydraulic turbine emulator, based on a torquecontrolled DC machine, a 2.8 kW PMSM and a 3 kW, 4-pole, doubly-fed induction machine, mechanically coupled to the DC machine and the PMSM. Two converters make the link between the induction machine rotor and the PMSM. Another PMSM, that drives the IG, is used to emulate the behavior of the fixed-speed wind generator associated to one power converter. System control is achieved by using dSPACETM controller boards. Fig. 10 represents the bench structure for the experimental study. As DFIG stator and rotor coils are star-connected with isolated neutral-point, only two stator and rotor currents are measured. Rotor currents are needed to compute rotor fluxes. Stator instantaneous voltage value is also measured to calculate the active and reactive powers delivered by the DFIG [6]. PWM Converter 1 is controlled in order to regulate the DC-link voltage to the reference value. PWM Converter 2 is controlling the active and reactive power delivered into the power grid. On the wind generators side, the PMSM currents and also the shaft rotational speed are measured, this machine having a torque regulation scheme. Tests are performed over an interval of 300 s, as follows: the hybrid system is connected to power grid, whose line-to-line reference voltage is 225 Vrms. The DC-link nominal value is 200V. The water rate of flow is considered constant for this time interval, because its variability has a time scale of hours or days.

Measurement Hydro-power turbine emulator

Shaft DCM PMSM DFIG

Control

PWM CONVERTER 1

PWM CONVERTER 2

dSpace Controller Board DS 1104

dSpace Controller Board DS 1103

dSpace Controller Board DS 1104

Shaft

PMSM

IG

Wind-power turbine emulator

Fig. 10. Schematic of the experimental test bench.

Fig. 11. Fixed-speed wind generator active power.

Fig. 15. Micro-hydro plant rotating speed.

Fig. 12. Micro-hydro plant active power.

Fig. 16. DC-link voltage.

Fig. 13. Total active power delivered into the grid

The IG is also connected to power grid, in motor mode, and after reaching the nominal speed, the PMSM starts to impose a torque reference until the IG passes in hyper-synchronism, and, implicitly, in generator mode. Results are presented in Figs. 11 to 16. They show, respectively, the active powers, generated (Figs. 11 and 12) and delivered (Fig. 13), the rotating speeds of hydro and wind generators (Figs. 14 and 15), and the DC-link voltage (Fig. 16). The wind/micro-hydro hybrid system has to maintain constant the total active power delivered to the grid. This value has been chosen in order to keep the hydropower plant on the mechanical characteristic. The wind generated power is variable with the wind speed, but the hydro-power system compensates these variations to deliver a constant active power to the grid (Figs. 12 and 13). The DFIG reactive power is kept to zero in the control process (reference value can be changed according to necessities), contrary to the IG, which absorbs the reactive power from the grid. The DC-link voltage is regulated satisfactorily (Fig. 16). V. CONCLUSIONS The paper has clearly emphasized that the variablespeed micro hydropower plant succeeds to compensate and to smooth the fluctuating wind power, when connected to the grid. This has been shown experimentally by means of a 3 kW laboratory test bench able to emulate a hybrid wind/micro-hydro power system.

Fig. 14. Wind generator rotating speed

Further work will stress to propose a methodology for the supervision of this hybrid system, including also a storage capacity. The introduction of short-term storage can guarantee a reserve of energy in order to smooth power variations, and to maximize the total power delivered into the grid. VI. APPENDIX a) DFIG Parameters Rated power: 3kW (220/380 V, 50 Hz); Number of poles: 2p=4; Stator resistance: RS = 1.6 ; Rotor resistance: RR = 0.4 ; Magnetizing inductance: M = 55 mH; Stator inductance: LS = 150 mH; Rotor inductance: LR = 23 mH; Inertia: J= 0.01 kgm2. b) IG Parameters Rated power: 3kW (220/380 V, 50 Hz); Number of poles: 2p=4; Stator resistance: RS = 0.75 ; Magnetizing inductance: M = 78 mH; Stator inductance: LS = 81 mH; Rotor inductance: LR = 81 mH; Inertia: J= 0.0085 kgm2. c) PMSM Parameters Rated power: 2.87kW (3000 rpm); Number of poles: 2p=6; Stator resistance: RS = 0.94 ; Direct-axis inductance: Ld = 14.4 mH; Quadrature-axis inductance: Lq = 25 mH; Back-emf coefficient: Ke= 0.78Vsrad-1; Inertia: J= 0.0014 kgm2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported in part by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research (Grant CNCSIS No. 421/2007). The test bench development has benefited from the financial support of the Regional Council Nord-Pas de Calais, the European Union, the Technological Research National Center of Lille, Forclum Ingenierie Verquin, Innovelect and HEI. REFERENCES
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