See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/224262303

Steady state analysis of synchronous generators by a coupled field-circuit

method

Conference Paper · June 1997

DOI: 10.1109/IEMDC.1997.604340 · Source: IEEE Xplore

CITATIONS READS

13 1,061

4 authors, including:

P. Zhou T.E. Mcdermott

ANSYS Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
85 PUBLICATIONS   2,161 CITATIONS    107 PUBLICATIONS   2,884 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Multiphysics Simulation by Design for Electrical Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (IEEE Press Series on Power Engineering) 1st Edition View project

All content following this page was uploaded by P. Zhou on 10 December 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Steady State Analysis of Synchronous Generators
by A Coupled Field-CircuitMethod
Ping Zhou, Thomas E. McDermott, Zoltan J. Cendes M.A. Rahman
Ansoft Corporation Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science
Four Station Square, Pittsburgh, PA, 15219 Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, A1B 3x5

-
Abstract A method for the efficient simulation of the steady- rotor position is not required. In conjunction with the proper
state performance of synchronous generators is proposed in this use of the dqO reference frame, great time saving is achieved
paper. The method is based on an indirect coupling of the finite without the loss of engineering accuracy.
element method and circuit models and provides the rated exci-
11. METHOD OF ANALYSIS
tation requirement, complete load-angle characteristic and
dynamic synchronous parameters. The implementation of the The basic idea of the well-known two-axis theory is to
whole procedure can be realized conveniently by using commer- resolve the magnetomotive force (MMF, excitation) into two
cially available and technically mature finite element packages. components -one acting along the d-axis, and the other acting
along the q-axis -to calculate the individual response (flux) of
An application example is provided to demonstrate the effective- each excitation component. It is apparent that the two reaction
ness of the proposed approach. theory is not inherently correct when nonlinearity is included,
since it is based on the linear concept of superposition. Fortu-
I. INTRODUCTION nately, this difficulty can be surmounted by using the finite ele-
The use of the finite element method in modeling rotating ment method to model the nonlinearity. This is because the
electrical machines provides a significant advance in the finite element method is able to obtain the resultant field
degree of accuracy with which performance can be predicted. response directly. This accounts for all source excitations,
Two-dimensional models are especially appropriate for syn- rather than the individual d-axis or q-axis excitation compo-
chronous generators with relatively large stack lengths. Such nents. Each field component can thereafter be resolved from
models have been used to determine steady-state parameters the resultant field response, which is a pure mathematical
and initial load data for stability studies[l,2]. Modeling the operation that does not introduce any extra error. Another side-
coupling between the non-linear magnetic components and benefit of this approach is its natural handling of the electrical
electric circuits is important in order to predict the perfor- connection between phase windings in terms of zero-sequence
mance characteristics of a generator at system level. High components.
accuracy is obtained by including voltage drops across power Phasor analysis can provide a significant speed advantage
switching elements and the effects of 3D parts to complete the compared to time-stepping. The effect of the armature MMF
2D finite element analysis. harmonics can be included in the circuit equations by har-
There are two different approaches to couple finite element monic leakage reactance through conventional formule. The
models with circuit equations. One is direct coupling and the harmonic voltages in stator windings due to permeance ripple
other is indirect coupling. In direct coupling, the circuit equa- and higher harmonic MMF produced by rotor field current is
tions are directly incorporated into the field calculation and normally very small because of the distributing and chording
solved simultaneously[31. In indirect coupling, the field calcu- of the stator winding, and thus can be considered as having a
lation is performed by a free-standing program, while circuit negligible effect on machine performance. An exception to
simulation and coupling between field and circuit models are this is the voltage distortion investigation, which can be treated
handled in a separate program[4]. A drawback of direct cou- separately by performing Fourier analysis of flux distribution
pling is that symmetry of the large finite element coefficient along the airgap under both no-load and rated-load conditions.
matrix may be destroyed by adding in the circuit equations. In Thus, the space-time phasor relationship as shown in Fig. 1
addition, difficult modification of existing field calculation can be used to determine the instantaneous phase currents in
programs is required. Furthermore, direct coupling requires the armature and field current in the rotor for any load condi-
excessive computationaltime and memory if electric and mag- tions without the trouble of moving the rotor position. The dif-
netic nonlinearities are to be accounted for. The success of the ferent armature reactions under specified load conditions can
coupled finite element and state space method in modeling of simulated by setting I,, the peak value of stator currents
synchronous generators is encouraging[5,6]. This method I,, and the angle p as inputs to field calculation. The stator
incorporates the full impact of space harmonics caused by voltage equations in the dqO reference frame are
geometry and continuous relative motion in the inductances,
as well as the impact of saturation. It is recognized, however,
that this modeling technique requires extensive computation
time. Consequently, this method becomes impractical to sim-
ulate the complete load-angle characteristic as required when
a generator is connected to a power system.
In this paper, a modeling approach for computing the steady and the stator flux linkages are given by
state performance of a synchronous generator is presented wd = LdI,+ Laflf
based on the indirect coupling of the finite element and circuit
models. The space-time phasor relationships of the quantities WO = LJ,
in the machine are used to coordinate the set of instantaneous where I f is the field current, and L is the mutual inductance
phase currents in the armature and field current in the rotor. between the field winding and the greet axis. For steady state
Different load conditions are simulated and the motion of the operation, the differential terms with respect to time are zero

0-7803-3946-0/97/S10.00 O 1997 IEEE. WC2-2.1

 ditions. This is usually specified by the real and reactive power
Wf which the generator delivers. These requirements, along with
I I \
q -,axis the external circuit configuration, can be identified by the rated
I terminal voltage, rated armature current and the rated power
factor. Among these three prescribed quantities, the rated arma-
ture current can be used directly as input to the field computa-
tion to satisfy the imposed condition. However, trial inputs of
field current and armature current angle p are required in the
field computation to derive the terminal voltage and the inner
load angle which can be further converted into the power factor.
This difficulty can be dealt with by exploiting the weak cou-
pling between the output power and terminal voltage in con-
junction with the use of a phasor diagram. It is known that the
field current is sensitive to the terminal voltage which is a mea-
sure of reactive power involved, while the armature current
angle p is sensitive to the power factor angle and thus to the load
angle which is related to active power. This property can be
used to decouple the terminal voltage -$field current relation-
ship from the powerfactor - armature current angle p relation-
ship in the iterative process. The field current is first adjusted to
match the terminal voltage while holding the armature current
angle p constant. Next, the armature current angle p is adjusted
1.
.
a-axis to match the terminal power factor while holding the field cur-
rent constant. The steps in the procedure are indicated in the
Fig. 1. Synchronous generator time-space phasor diagram flowchart in Fig. 2.
in the dq0 reference frame and only speed voltages remain. The
-induced resultant speed voltage E,, corresponding to the total
fundamental air-gap field, and the inner load angletii can be
derived from finite-element solution by performing Fourier set initial guess I? , 6“’
analysis on the vector potential A around the outer surface of the
rotor. Thus, each component of speed voltage can be obtained
as
OW, = -Eisin6i
I L-li_=F___,
determine p and I, , I,, , I ,

(3)
OWd = EiC0SGi

If a leakage reactance x I is further introduced to take into

account the effects of the armature MMF harmonics and the
leakage flux of end windings, substituting Eqn. (3) into Eqn.
(I), gives
V , = - raId + x l Iq + Eisin6i t
V4 = - T a l q - xlId + EicosGi
(4)
v, = J h
6 = atan(Vd/Vq)
FE field analysis
Eqn. (4) provides the circuit model for the coupled field-circuit at no-load widl rated I,
analysis. It can be appreciated that r, and x I may be extended i
to include other possible voltage drops in a system level such as I Founer analysis and postprocessing]
the voltage drops along the transmission lines and the voltage
drops across power switching elements. The basic idea of the
proposed coupled field-circuit approach is to get the armature I
d=1
no-load point output
1
continue to next figure
current, field current and the angle between them using equa-
tions (4) as the inputs to the field computation, while the air-gap
magnetic fields, thus the induced voltage Ei and the inner load Fig. 2. Flowchart for determining If and
angle 6 , , are obtained as outputs of finite-element solutions and simulating no-load and rated-load conditions
are input to the circuit equations. Because of the nature of the B. Load-angle Characteristic
nonlinearity in both the field equations and the circuit equations
associated with the voltage source excitation, an iterative pro- In such a case, the probIem may be stated as follows: Given
cess between the field computation and circuit simulation is the field current, determine the armature current, output power,
needed to obtain the actual physical quantities corresponding to load angle and power factor for different load conditions at the
a specific load point. terminal voltages. A similar difficulty to the proceeding arises:
the armature currents, which have to be used as the input to field
A. No Load and Rated Load Cases computation are unknown before the field solutions are avail-
One of the basic requirement of synchronous machine design able. In order to alleviate this difficulty, the armature current
is to determine the field current required under rated load con- angle /3 is chosen as the independent variable to initiate differ-

wc2-2.2
ent load conditions while the magnitude I,,, is determined by load field solutions, the values of rated load angle and voltage
iteration. This choice is made because p is very sensitive to load distortion factor are also determined. From the successive no-
angle. Thus, for a specific p setting, the lack of balance between load simulation under rated field current, the open circuit volt-
the computed terminal voltage and the prescribed one can be age, voltage regulation factor and voltage distortion factor are
used to obtain an improved estimate of the correct magnitude also obtained. The results o f simulation are shown in Table 1
I,, and to proceed in an iterative manner until satisfactory bal- together with the available test data.
ance is achieved. The entire process is illustrated in Fig. 3. TABLE 1. SOME PERFORMANCE DATAAT NO-LOADA N D RATEDLOAD

A
i = O set p“’ and initialize I!:’
rated field current If (A)
simulation
1236.5
test
1265
I rated load angle 6 (deg.) 32.86 N.A.
open circuit voltage E, (V) 22614 22195
voltage regulation (%) 43.58 40.9
no-load voltage distortion (%) 1.9 2.04
rated-load voltage distortion (%) 3.9 N.A.
Keeping the rated field current unchanged, the complete
load-angle characteristic evaluated is shown in Fig. 4.It is seen
from the figure that the load-angle curve is not purely sinusoi-
no dal as is the one derived by using the conventional approach. In
addition, the armature current, power factor characteristic and
1 dynamic parameters E,, X, and X as a function of load angle
can also be evaluated. These simulation results are crucial to
do p adjustment
assess the steady power limit, power transfer capability, tran-
4 sient stability margin and critical clearing time of the generator.
Eo = ~o(oprr) 4
- _ l _ - l l _ ~ - ~ -

update x, and xp
+ GA
W
field current = 1236.5IAl.line voltage = 15751 [VI

I‘ calculate iniual current for next load poinil

I
I

Fig. 3. Flowchart for load performance calculation

It is noted that the locus of the angle p first increases with
increasing load angle 6 to a maximum value then decreases.
Hence, even though the angle p functions as an independent
variable to initiate a new load operating point, special care must
be taken to prevent setting the angle p beyond its actual possible
operating domain. In order to expedite convergence and avoid
possible oscillation, a scheme combining the use of the New-
ton-Raphson Method and the Bisection Method is applied.
Fig. 4. Load-angle characteristic
111. APPLICATION EXAMPLE
The case-study machine in this paper is a 200MVA, REFERENCES
15.75kV(Y connected), 8625A, 0.85pf(lagging), 50Hz, 54 sta- [l] M.V.K. Chari and P.P. Silvester, Analysis of turboalternator magnetic
tor slots with coil pitch 22/27,2-p01e turbogenerator. Ansoft’s fields by finite elements”, IEEE Trans. on Power Appararus and Sysrems,
Maxwell 2D finite element package is used for the required Vol. 90, No.2, ~8.454-464,1971.
[2] C.N. Ashtiani, D.A.Lowther, “The use of finite elements in simulation of
field computation. The above proposed indirect coupled field steady-state operation of a synchronous generator with a known terminal
and circuit approach can be easily implemented by making use loading condition”, IEEE Trans. on Magnetics,Vol. 19, No.6, pp. 2381-
of the control program feature available in the field model setup 2384, 1983.
[3] E Piriou and A. Razek, “Coupling of saturated electromagnetic systems to
panel of Maxwell 2D. One of the control program functions is non-linear power electronic device”, IEEE Trans. on Magnerics, Vol. 24,
to provide an interface to any control program written by a user. No.1, pp. 274-277, 1988.
This user-written control program is automatically executed [4] G. Bedrosian, “A new method for coupling finite element field solutions
with external circuits and kinematics”, IEEE Trans. on Magnerics, Vol.
every time before and after the field solver is run. As a result, 29, No.2, pp. 1664-1668, 1993.
this interface can be conveniently applied to serve our purpose: [5] S.R. Chaudhry, S. Ahmed-Zaid and N.A. Demerdash, “Coupled finite-ele-
to initialize, to perform Fourier analysis, to run circuit simula- menvstate-space modeling of turbogenerators in the ABC frame of refer-
ence - the no-load case”, IEEE Trans. on Energy Conversion, Vol. 10,
tion and to automatically determine all required source quanti- No.1, pp. 56-62, 1995.
ties for next field computation. [6] S.R. Chaudhry, S. Ahmed-Zaid and N.A. Demerdash, “Coupled finite-ele-
In this simulation, the rated field current is first determined ment/state-space modeling of turbogenerators in the ABC frame of refer-
ence - the short-circuit and load cases including saturated parameters”,
under the prescribed terminal conditions of rated voltage, rated IEEE Trans. on Energy Conversion, Vol.10, No.1, pp. 63-70, 1995.
armature current and rated power factor. Based on the rated

WC2-2.3

View publication stats