An Energy-Efficient Start-Up Strategy for Large Variable Speed Hydro Pump Turbine Equipped with Doubly Fed Asynchronous Machine

The use of a Doubly Fed Asynchronous Machine (DFAM) provides attractive characteristics and offers operational flexibility in many variable speed generation applications, such as in a hydroelectric pumped storage plant. In a variable speed hydroelectric pumped storage plant, the start-up process of DFAM is identical to the conventional singly fed asynchronous machine, wherein a significant amount of energy is wasted. This paper introduces an energy-efficient start-up strategy in DFAM based hydroelectric pump-turbine. The back-to-back voltage source converter connected to the rotor side is amenable for speed control (real power), braking (regenerative/dynamic), and starting the unit. Further, in this starting technique, the stator circuit of the machine is injected with a low voltage DC supply at starting instead of short-circuiting the windings. This DC injection reduces the slip losses and cuts down the magnetizing current requirement. The magnitude of the required DC supply is estimated based on the machine’s reactive power requirement. Also, the switching of stator winding between the short circuit connection, DC injection, and grid supply is carried out using a changeover switch and determined by the speed of the rotor. The proposed starting strategy is investigated with 250 MW DFAM in Matlab/Simulink environment and experimented with a 2.2 kW DFAM prototype. Test results show that the proposed starting method can conserve more than 26.1 percent of electrical energy in the example application compared to the conventional V/f start-up strategy.