800 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 19, NO.

4, DECEMBER 2004

Comparison of the Response of Doubly Fed and Fixed-Speed Induction

Generator Wind Turbines to Changes in Network Frequency
Janaka Ekanayake and Nick Jenkins

Abstract—Synchronous and fixed-speed induction generators II. INERTIA RESPONSE FROM FIXED-SPEED INDUCTION
release the kinetic energy of their rotating mass when the power GENERATOR-BASED WIND TURBINES
system frequency is reduced. In the case of doubly fed induction
generator (DFIG)-based wind turbines, their control system In the case of synchronous or induction generators, energy
operates to apply a restraining torque to the rotor according to a is released automatically from the rotating mass for a drop in
predetermined curve with respect to the rotor speed. This control network frequency.
system is not based on the power system frequency and there is
negligible contribution to the inertia of the power system. A DFIG For a change in frequency from to , assuming that the
control system was modified to introduce inertia response to the speed of the rotor changes proportionally from to , the
DFIG wind turbine. Simulations were used to show that with the kinetic energy released by the machine is given by
proposed control system, the DFIG wind turbine can supply con-
siderably greater kinetic energy than a fixed-speed wind turbine.
(1)
Index Terms—Doubly fed, fixed speed, frequency response, in-
ertia, wind turbines.
(2)
where
I. INTRODUCTION

I N recent years, there has been increasing interest in

doubly fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind tur-
bines and many of the large wind turbines that are now
From (2) and substituting for , we can obtain

(3)
commercially available are of this type. Operating a large
number of DFIG-based wind turbines displaces conventional
synchronous generators and reduces the system inertia. This In order to investigate the response of a fixed speed induction
is due to the fact that the DFIG control system decouples generator for system frequency changes, simulations were car-
the mechanical and electrical systems, thus preventing the ried out using PSCAD for a 2-MW, 690-V fixed-speed induction
generator from responding to system frequency changes. This generator connected to an infinite busbar through a 0.69/11-kV
is undesirable when there are a large number of DFIG wind transformer. Fig. 1 shows the response obtained when the fre-
turbines operating, especially in periods of low load and quency of the infinite busbar was reduced exponentially from 50
on smaller power systems (e.g., Great Britain and Ireland). to 49.75 Hz. For simplicity and due to the lack of data, the gener-
The frequency of a power system with low inertia will, of ator drive train was modeled as a lumped inertia of 2 MW/MVA
course, change rapidly for abrupt variations in generation or with a mechanical damping of 0.01 p.u. A constant wind torque
load. In this case, additional frequency response ancillary was applied.
services must be provided to ensure frequency limits are not For a 2-MW generator and a sudden frequency change from
exceeded [1]. 50 to 49.75 Hz, (2) indicates the kinetic energy of the rotating
In this paper, a supplementary control loop is added to the mass that will be released is 40 kW. This is confirmed by the
DFIG controller to reintroduce inertia response. Simulations area under the output power curve of Fig. 1.
on an electromagnetic transient package (EMTDC/PDCAD)
were carried out to compare the inertia response of a
III. DFIG CONTROL
fixed-speed induction generator and a DFIG with the addi-
tional control loop. It is shown that the greater variations in A full description of a DFIG control system is given in [2].
rotor speed available from the DFIG wind turbine lead to Fig. 2 shows that part of the control system, which is used to
considerably more kinetic energy being released to support extract maximum power from the wind.
the power system frequency. Any change in rotor speed results in a change in the set
torque or torque demand . The torque demand is trans-
lated into a rotor current demand and compared with the actual
rotor current to obtain the rotor-injected voltage. This injected
Manuscript received December 9, 2003. Paper no. PESL-00146-2003. voltage acts upon the machine and changes the speed of the wind
The authors are with the University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya 20400, Sri turbine.
Lanka; Manchester Center for Electrical Energy (MCEE), University of Man- If another quantity varies (other than the wind torque), the
chester Institute of Technology (UMIST), Manchester M60 1QD, U.K.; and also
with the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. control system acts to restore the speed back to its operating
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TEC.2004.827712 point. This control action is shown in Fig. 3. As described
0885-8969/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 19, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004 801

Fig. 4. Supplementary control loop for inertia response.

IV. DFIG CONTROLLER MODIFIED FOR INERTIA RESPONSE

By taking the derivative of the kinetic energy available at any
speed , the power that can be extracted from a rotating mass
can be obtained as
Fig. 1. Response of a fixed-speed induction generator to a drop in network
frequency (all quantities are in per unit).
(4)

The inertia constant H is defined as in the usual

notation. Substituting for in (4) and (5) we get

(5)

If and are per-unit quantities of power and speed, then

(5) can be written as

(6)
Fig. 2. DFIG control for maximum power extraction.

Therefore, the per-unit torque is given by

(7)

The controller shown in Fig. 2 was modified by adding a

signal corresponding to (7) to the set torque (torque demand).
As the system frequency drops, the set point torque is increased
slowing the rotor and extracting kinetic energy. In order to min-
imize the impact of this supplementary control on mechanical
drive train loads, the rate of change of power injection was mod-
ified by adding a first-order filter after the input. Delay on
this filter was shown not only to reduce the rate of increase of the
electromagnetic (EM) torque but also reduced the magnitude of
the peak torque. The modified controller with the supplemen-
tary control loop for inertia control is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 3. Response of a DFIG wind turbine to a drop in network frequency (all V. DFIG INERTIA RESPONSE
quantities are in per unit).
Fig. 5 shows the power generated from the DFIG wind tur-
bine, change in the rotor speed, and the EM torque of the gen-
above, the DFIG control system acts against the system fre- erator for an exponential change in the system frequency from
quency change, thus responding with a negligible inertia 50 to 49.75 Hz. With the additional control loop as shown in
response. Fig. 4, kinetic energy of 700 kW was released.
802 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 19, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004

changes in the system frequency. This is not automatically

true for converter-connected plant and converter-controlled
plant such as DFIGs. However, during drops in network system
frequency, the DFIG speed can be driven to a lower value using
its controller, thus introducing an inertia response. A supple-
mentary control loop was introduced to a DFIG controller to
obtain inertia response. Estimates shows that with the given
frequency change and with the natural choice of supplementary
controller gain (2H), a DFIG can supply 700 kW of inertia
while a fixed-speed machine of similar rating can only provide
40 kW.

REFERENCES
Fig. 5. Response of a DFIG with supplementary control loop to a drop-in
network frequency (all quantities are in per unit). [1] I. A. Erinmez, D. O. Bickers, G. F. Wood, and W. W. Hung, “NGC expe-
rience with frequency control in England and Wales—Provision of fre-
quency response by generators,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. Winter
VI. CONCLUSION Meeting, New York, Jan. 31–Feb. 4, 1999.
[2] J. B. Ekanayake, L. Holdsworth, and N. Jenkins, “Control of doubly fed
Synchronous generators and fixed-speed asynchronous induction generator (DFIG) wind turbine,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., Power
generators release kinetic energy from their rotating mass for Eng., vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 28–32, Feb. 2003.