Medium Voltage Current Source Converter Drives for Marine Propulsion System using a Dual-winding Synchronous Machine

Abstract Medium Voltage (MV) AC drives are being increasingly used in high-power marine applications for running thrusters and main propulsion motors. In this paper, an MV drive solution employing active front-end current source converters is proposed for a 7 MW synchronous motor based propulsion system. The proposed solution includes two independent drives, each to control one of the two sets of three-phase windings of the synchronous machine. A dedicated communication link between the drives allows continuous load sharing and robust system operation in a master-slave drive configuration. Field oriented control with the use of an absolute encoder is implemented for providing high starting torque and smooth speed control over a wide speed range including a 30% over-speed region. Major advantages of the proposed solution include simple structure, increased system power rating, redundant operation, low-harmonic input/output waveforms, improved reliability, elimination of a bulky input isolation transformer, and parallel drive control without the need of a complex coordinated inverter gating system. In addition, the system also offers input power factor compensation and dynamic braking to allow operation on a generator based supply system. Field test results obtained on a ship are provided to demonstrate the system performance. I. Introduction

In high-power marine applications, dual-winding synchronous machines are widely used not only to achieve higher power levels with compact motor size but also to offer redundancy operation for maximizing the overall ship performance. Traditionally, high-power synchronous motors are driven by phase-controlled cycloconverters [1,2]. The cycloconverter drives save the initial converter cost but provide poor harmonic profiles in both line- and motorside waveforms. In order to improve the waveforms, multi-pulse transformer and multiple converter configurations are required to filter out certain low-order harmonics [2]. In addition to the cycloconverter solution, multi-level voltage source converters (VSCs) with direct torque control (DTC) have also found presence in the literature and real industrial marine applications [3-5]. As an alternative solution, this paper proposes a marine drive system using current source converters (CSCs). The proposed solution provides sinusoidal motor voltage and current waveforms. The 5th and 7th order harmonics in the motor currents are eliminated or very low in magnitude, making the system suitable for dual-winding motors with either zero-degree or thirty-degree phase angle shift. A patented integrated dclink choke with common-mode inductance can also be employed to reduce the common-mode voltage stress on the motor insulation system. Having a low component count with simple mechanical packaging and similar rectifier and inverter packaging provides increased reliability and system availability. In the following sections, detailed description of the system and the controller is provided. Test results from a real 7 MW ship propulsion system are given to illustrate the validity of the proposed solution. II. System overview

The proposed system configuration is shown in Fig.1. The two parallel drives, one acting as the master drive and the other acting as the slave drive, communicate over a drive area network link (DANL). The master drive takes the responsibility for torque and flux regulation, while the slave drive serves as a torque follower and receives the commands from the master drive. A system controller (typically PLC) communicates with each drive for supervisory control and serves as the interface to the customer system. In case of single drive failure, the system allows the remaining healthy drive to continue running with reduced capacity. If the master drive is faulted, the slave drive will then become the acting master and start performing motor control. In addition, the system is built with two exciter packages which allows full redundant operation. III. Current source converters The current source converter employed in each drive is composed of a pulse-width-modulated (PWM) current source rectifier (CSR) and a PWM current source inverter (CSI) connected through a dc-link choke. The switching device used in both converters are symmetric gate commutated thyristors (SGCTs) operating at a few hundred Hz (400~600Hz). Active PWM switching with loworder harmonic elimination at the line side allows to improve the harmonic performance without multi-pulse transformers. Detailed converter configurations and descriptions can be found in Fig.3 and [6,7]. The power component design will be discussed in the full paper. IV. Dual-winding synchronous motor The dual-winding synchronous motor discussed in the proposed configuration can have either zero or thirty degree phase shifted between the two sets of electrical windings. The equivalent circuit in the dq synchronous frame is shown in Fig.2 [1]. Assuming the stator winding resistance and leakage inductance are the same for the two sets of windings, the equivalent circuit of the stator can be further simplified with consideration of phase angle shift. Detailed equations and derivations for 2
Fig.2 Equivalent circuits of the dual-winding synchronous machine [1]. Fig.1 System configuration of parallel CSC drives for dualwinding synchronous motor

field oriented control (FOC) of the dual-winding synchronous machine will be provided in the full paper. V. Control of dual-winding synchronous motor using CSC

The simplified block diagram of the drive control in the master drive is shown in Fig.3. In marine applications, the propulsion drives are typically supplied by a generator system. Selective harmonic elimination (SHE) scheme with fixed modulation index is selected to eliminate low-order harmonics with limited device switching frequency. The main purpose of the line-side control is to receive the dc-link current reference from the motor-side controller and ensure desired dc-link current regulation through rectifier delay angle (rec) control. Motor-side control is developed based on the air-gap flux oriented control. The motor voltage vci and current is are measured to obtain the electrical angular frequency e, the air-gap flux magnitude f and angle motor. In the zero or low speed region, rotor position from absolute encoder is obtained for FOC control to offer high breaking torque capability. The speed regulator issues the torque reference Te* and torque-producing current reference isq*. The torque reference together with the motor speed feedback e defines the flux reference f* that is linearly interpolated between no-load and rated values. The flux regulator provides references for both rotor field current if* and stator magnetizing current isd*. The stator magnetizing current helps improve the dynamic performance of the flux control loop during transients and can be controlled to zero in steady state. The references for dc-link current idc* and inverter delay angle inv are then derived from converter currents, which are the sum of the motor and capacitor currents. The modulation schemes of the inverter devices incorporate space vector modulation (SVM) and SHE schemes in different speed ranges to provide desired overall performance in the full range.

Fig.3 Simplified block diagram of the control system in the master drive.

Other additional features, such as leading power factor compensation and dynamic braking are also integrated into the control system to adapt the drives for generator based supply system. The power factor compensation (PFC) feature (shown in blue blocks in Fig.3) intentionally modifies inverter modulation index and motor stator magnetizing current to increase the dc-link current level and thereby reduce line-side leading VARs [8]. Dynamic braking system [7] as indicated in red blocks in Fig.3 will take over the dc-link current control during regenerating operations such as rapid speed reduction and crash stop, so that the kinetic energy in the motor is dissipated in the resistor bank and not fed back to the generator system. In this parallel drive system, the speed and flux regulators are only active in the master drive and the outputs of the regulators are passed over to the slave drive to determine the motor current references in the slave drive. Each drive performs its own independent dc-link current control, line PF control and dynamic braking control. More detailed description of the control blocks and features will be discussed in the full paper. VI. Experimental results The proposed system and control is verified on a ship propulsion system with a dual-winding synchronous motor rated at 6kV/7MW/36Hz. There is no phase shift between the two sets of three-phase windings. The following figures demonstrate the drive performance in steady state and transients. The line- and motor-side current and voltage waveforms of the master drive at full power 7MW and over speed 46Hz are shown in Fig. 4. It can be observed that the motor side waveforms (Ch1&2) are smooth and sinusoidal with low THD. At the line side, the voltage measurement (Ch4) is at the rectifier input (vcr)
Fig.4 line- and motor-side waveforms at full power (7MW) overspeed region (46Hz). Ch1: line to line motor voltage (vci_ab);Ch2: motor phase current (is_a); Ch3: input line current (ig_a); Ch4: line to line rectifier input voltage (vcr_ab). Time: 10ms/div.

instead of the generator output (vg). The line current waveform (Ch3) is with low harmonics and meets IEEE 519 standard. Leading VAR associated with line capacitor is fully compensated by the converter. A crash stop operation of the ship is shown in Fig. 5. In this test, the propeller is originally operated at 29.3Hz, and is then commanded to go to reverse -40Hz at time around 27s. This simulates the scenario when an emergency stopping of the ship is required. The Speed Reference and Encoder Feedback shown in the second axis indicate the close control of the propeller speed to its reference. Torque Reference varies from about 0.3pu to -0.8pu in order to follow the speed reference. The rectifier controls Idc Feedback to follow Idc Reference (coming from motor-side current requirements) and thereby ensures precise control of the motor speed and torque. More test results of the parallel drive operation will be shown in the full paper.

Fig.5 Crash stop test- speed reference changes from 29.3Hz to -40Hz (speed reference and feedback shown in the second axis)

VII. Conclusions In this paper, a high-power marine propulsion drive system employing parallel current source converter drives and dual-winding synchronous machine are proposed. The system structure, converter topology, motor modeling and control system design are discussed in detail. The proposed system features: (1) simple and flexible parallel drive configurations to achieve high-power ratings; (2) direct connection to generation systems without isolation transformers; (3) robust and redundant operation; (4) low THD line- and motor-side waveforms that meets IEEE 519 and optimize motor performance; (5) high dynamic performance with wide operating speed range; (6) input power factor compensation and dynamic braking for generator based supply system; (7) ease of system integration to meet the specific customer control requirements through PLC. Test results on a 7MW propulsion system verify the practical application and control performance of the proposed configuration.
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