Fault ride-through capability improvement of doubly fed induction generator-based wind turbine using static volt ampere reactive compensator

The use of wind energy is increasing due to rapid increase in energy consumption and rapid deployment of wind energy. Among different types of wind turbine generators, doubly fed induction generators are most widely used because of their low cost and capability to work in different wind speeds. On the other hand, doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs) are very sensitive to voltage drop. If a fault occurs in the network the voltage of DFIG terminal drops. So the rotor current increases and this may lead to damage DFIG converters. So, a protection system must be used to protect DFIG converters. One of the common schemes used to protect DFIGs is crowbar protection. In this paper, the effects of static volt ampere reactive compensator (SVC) on DFIG operation during voltage drop and crowbar protection are investigated in detail. Results show that by using SVC the voltage drop of DFIG terminal during grid faults decreases. Therefore, the operation time of crowbar decreases and the fault ride through capability of DFIG increases.