Tatsuhito Nakajima

Power system damping enhancement using unified power flow controller (UPFC)

The Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) can inject voltage with controllable magnitude and phase angle in series with a transmission line. It can also generate or absorb controllable reactive power. UPFC is expected to be able to damp power system oscillations more effectively than power electronics devices such as SVG and TCSC. In this paper, a control system design of a UPFC for power system damping enhancement based on the eigenvalue control method is proposed. It is made clear that the best design method for the power system damping enhancement is to determine steady-state values of the UPFC control variables and the control parameters of the UPFC such as gains and time constants simultaneously, because the controllability of UPFC depends on the steady-state values of UPFC and the power flow condition. The effectiveness of the proposed control system taking into account UPFC inverter ratings is verified by digital time simulation. Furthermore the effects of the input signals to the UPFC controller on small-signal stability and transient stability enhancement are studied, and it is made clear that UPFC controllers using global information are more effective for power system damping enhancement than those using local information because global information has stronger observability for power system oscillations than local information.

A triple redundant controller which adopts the time-sharing fault recovery method and its application to a power converter controller

A novel fault recovery method, in which memory copy from a normal system to a fault detected system is executed in time-sharing fashion, has been implemented in a triple redundant controller. This method reduces data copy bandwidth required for recovery of the fault detected system, and allows non-stop fault recovery with only a little hardware overhead, even when the controller contains multiple processors and operates at a very short operating period. The developed controller contains triplicated processing units, each of which consists of seven 60 MIPS processor boards connected by a 30 MHz 4 byte bus. One processor board contains a bus arbiter, and each of the remaining six processor boards contains three sets of 100 Mbps two-way optical links, which can be utilized for inter-system memory copy as well as for connecting to 10 units. This controller has been applied to a power converter controller, and a 104 microsecond operating period was achieved.

Steady-state stability of shaft torsional oscillation in an ac-dc interconnected system with self-commutated converters

Recent progress in power electronics technology makes it possible to consider applying self-commutated converters using gate turn-off thyristors (GTOs) to HVDC transmission systems. Since the self-commutated converter can be operated stably without depending on ac-side voltage, the magnitude and the phase angle of the converter output voltage can be controlled independently. Therefore, this type of converter will improve voltage stability at its ac side. On the other hand, shaft torsional oscillation of a thermal power plant caused by the interaction between the shaft-generator system and the control system of the self-commutated converter is still an open problem. In this paper, a linearized model for eigenvalue analysis of a power system, including HVDC interconnection with self-commutated converters, is described to analyze the effect of the self-commutated converter on the shaft torsional oscillation of a thermal power plant. Then, numerical results from the eigenvalue analysis of the shaft torsional oscillation are presented. Results obtained by the frequency response method are also reported. The numerical results make it clear that parameter regions of DC-AVR and ACR control systems of self-commutated converters exist where the shaft torsional oscillation may be caused.

Voltage distribution in multi-cascaded transformer

The voltage distribution for lightning surges in multicascaded transformers that will be used for converter transformers in self-excited dc transmission was studied using model transformers. There was good agreement between measured data and calculated results. It was shown that our calculation program has sufficient accuracy for estimating voltage distribution. Maximum voltages in high-voltage windings for lightning surges were below 120% and transfer voltages to the converting circuit were below about 5%. Therefore, there were no serious problems in cascaded transformers for lightning surges. However, their voltage distribution was not satisfactory when the same transformers were connected in cascade. We determined by a simulation that the distribution could be improved by modifying transformer structures according to their position in the cascade connection.