Diagnosis of Fault in Doubly-Fed Three-Phase Induction Generator in Wind Power Applications

Inter-turn short-circuits faults are one of the most common problems in Induction machines, especially in the Doubly-Fed Induction Generator Based-Wind Energy Conversion system. Accurate and fast fault diagnosis and detection minimize the down-time of the units as further damages can be prevented. In this paper, a robust fault detection approach for Doubly-Fed Induction Generator (DFIG) based on wind generators is proposed. The faults’ smart diagnosis and detection are based on the Sliding Mode Observer and Second Order Sliding Mode Control. The observer generates a residual for detection of stator Inter-Turn Short Circuit faults which can affect a system model. A decision system is used to process the residual vector to detect faults. In order to shed more light on the designed approach performances regarding the inter-turn short-circuit fault occurrence, simulations were implemented in MATLAB/Simulink environment.