IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO.

5, MAY 2011

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Fault-Ride-Through Capability of
Oscillating-Water-Column-Based
Wave-Power-Generation Plants Equipped With
Doubly Fed Induction Generator and Airflow Control
Mikel Alberdi, Modesto Amundarain, Aitor J. Garrido, Member, IEEE,
Izaskun Garrido, Member, IEEE, and Francisco Javier Maseda

AbstractThe increasing use of distributed power-generation

systems, as with the case of wave-power-generation plants, requires a reliable fault-ride-through capability. The effects of grid
fault include uncontrolled turbogenerator acceleration, dangerous
rotor peak currents, and high reactive-power consumption so that
the plant may contribute to the voltage dip. A simple solution
is automatic disconnection from the grid, but this policy could
lead to a massive power-network failure. This is why new Grid
Codes oblige these systems to remain connected to the grid. In this
paper, an oscillating-water-column-based wave-power-generation
plant equipped with a doubly fed induction generator is modeled
and controlled to overcome balanced grid faults. The improvement
relies on the implementation of a control scheme that suitably
coordinates the airflow control, the active crowbar, and the rotorand grid-side converters to allow the plant to remain in service
during grid fault, contributing to its attenuation by supplying
reactive power to the network and complying with new Grid
Code requirements. The simulated results show that it obtains a
great reduction of the rotor currents, improving the transients and
avoiding rotor acceleration. Similar results are obtained from the
experimental implementation.

b, l
Blade height, blade chord length.
n, K
Number of blades, turbine constant.
q,
Flow rate, flow coefficient.
Wavelength, wave period.
, Tw
h, A
Water depth, wave height.
Wave group velocity, inertia of the system.
Cg , J
, T
Angular velocity, torque.
Ca, Ct
Power and torque coefficients.
R, L,
Resistance, inductance, flux.
V , I, F
Voltage, current, frequency.
P, Q
Active and reactive power.
Subscripts
d, q
Direct and quadrature components.
t, g, m Turbine, generator, magnetizing.
gr, s, r Grid, stator, and rotor side.

Index TermsCrowbar, distributed power generation, doubly

fed induction generator (DFIG), fault-tolerant control, flow control, low-voltage ride through, oscillating water column (OWC),
voltage-source converters, wave energy, wells turbine.

HE use of distributed energy resources is increasingly

being pursued as a supplement and an alternative to large
conventional central power stations, often remotely controlled
(see, e.g., [1]). The penetration of medium- and high-capacity
power-production plants, like wind farms and similar facilities,
has reached such a level in diverse countries as Denmark,
Germany, and Spain that represent a major impact on the characteristics of the power network [2]. In the particular case of
Spain, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade published
on October 4, 2006, Operating Procedure 12.3 regarding the
requirement response to voltage dips of wind farms in which
the requirements to comply to the power-generation systems in
the special regime of medium and high capacity are stated, in
order to ensure the continuity of supply [3].
In the last couple of years, there has been a worldwide
resurgent interest for wave energy, particularly in Europe. The
developments in this sector are comparable with those in wind
energy a few decades ago with similar economic potentials.
Worldwide, the estimated technical and economical energyproduction potential for ocean energy is estimated at about
100 000 TWh/year. Today, there exist several ways to obtain
energy from the sea. In particular, the interest of this work
focuses on extracting energy from sea waves by using oscillating water columns (OWC) to transform the wave movement

N OMENCLATURE
Pwf , Pin
Ed , g
vx , dp
, w
a, r

Incident wave power, power available to turbine.

Wave-energy density, gravitational constant.
Airflow speed, pressure-drop across rotor.
Air density, seawater density.
Area of turbine duct, mean radius.

Manuscript received January 25, 2010; revised May 26, 2010 and August 18,
2010; accepted September 20, 2010. Date of publication November 9, 2010;
date of current version April 13, 2011. This work was supported in part by the
Science and Innovation Council MICINN through Research Projects ENE200907200 and ENE2010-18345, by the UE FP7 EFDA under Task WP09-DIA02-01 WP III-2-c, and by the Basque Government through Research Projects
S-PE08UN15 and S-PE09UN14.
The authors are with the Department of Automatic Control and Systems
Engineering, University of the Basque Country, 48012 Bilbao, Spain (e-mail:
mikel.alberdi@ehu.es; molty.amundarain@ehu.es; aitor.garrido@ehu.es;
izaskun.garrido@ehu.es; fcjavier.maseda@ehu.es).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2010.2090831

I. I NTRODUCTION

0278-0046/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

into pneumatic energy [4], [5]. This can be converted into

mechanical energy with the use of a turbine [6][8], which, in
turn, is used to move an induction generator [9][13]. Although,
at present, there is no specific normative requirement on wave
energy, the arising issues with regard to power grid faults are
similar and must also be solved by means of adequate faulttolerant control schemes.
Many renewable power-generation plants incorporate a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) to allow variable rotorspeed operation. The DFIG is directly connected to the network
through the stator, while the rotor is connected to the grid
through a variable-frequency converter (VFC), which is only
required to handle a fraction (25%30%) of the nominal power
to achieve total control of the generator. The VFC is composed
of two voltage-source converters: one on the side of the rotor
[rotor-side converter (RSC)] and the other one on the side of
the grid [grid-side converter (GSC)], connected back to back
through a capacitor [14][17].
In this paper, an OWC-based wave-power-generation plant is
controlled by means of two complementary control strategies: a
rotational-speed control and an airflow control. The rotationalspeed control by means of RSC provides a fast way to react to
abrupt and short changes in the turbine speed, ensuring that the
average power of the generator is adequately adjusted according
to the incident-wave power level. In addition, a throttle valve is
used to control the flow through the turbine so as to increase
the amount of energy produced, particularly at higher incidentwave power levels [32].
Nevertheless, renewable-power-generation plants based on
DFIG are very sensitive to voltage dips. When a grid fault occurs on the transmission system, the speed of the turbogenerator
group increases due to the imbalance between the mechanical
torque imposed by the turbine and the electromagnetic torque of
the induction generator. Also, during the fault period and fault
recovery, the induction generator injects large peak currents,
with the risk of damaging the rotor converter and increasing the
consumption of reactive power so that if the plant would not
be tripped from the grid, it would contribute to the voltage dip
[18][22]. However, the politics of disconnecting the system
from the grid may initiate collapse of the power network.
As indicated previously, new Grid Codes oblige distributed
power-generation systems to remain connected to the power
network during the fault to avoid massive chain disconnections
so that the implementation of an adequate fault-ride-through
(FRT) capability is indispensable in this kind of systems to
ensure its stability and uninterrupted operation [23][27].
A solution sometimes employed is the use of a crowbar,
which guarantees connection to the grid. The crowbar short
circuits the rotor windings, protecting the RSC from overvoltages and overcurrents that arise when grid fault takes place
[30]. Nevertheless, under these conditions, the DFIG becomes a
squirrel-cage motor and begins to absorb an amount of reactive
power that the RSC cannot regulate since it remains blocked.
At the same time, the Wells turbine continues rotating by the
action of the incident waves so that an undesired excessive
acceleration of the turbogenerator group can be produced because the generator is out of control while the crowbar remains
connected.

Fig. 1.

Representative spectrum of the wave climate.

This paper proposes a novel control scheme that allows the

plant to manage grid faults by adequately coordinating the
airflow control, the active crowbar, and the VFC so as to remain
in service during the grid fault, composing a brand-new topic
as in the case of FRT capability in wave-power-generation
plants. The flow is reduced by regulating the throttle air valve
in order to control the acceleration of the group. Meanwhile,
the crowbar is activated during a fraction of the fault, i.e., just
the necessary time to avoid dangerous current values. When the
crowbar is switched off, the RSC regains control to reduce the
active- and reactive-power references. At the fault clearance,
the crowbar may be launched again if necessary. Finally, after a
short recovery period, the RSC is resumed, and the DFIG starts
to provide reactive power.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II
provides the necessary background on OWC-based wave-power
generation. In Section III, the proposed control scheme is
presented, coordinating the airflow control, crowbar control,
RSC, and GSC. In Section IV, some demonstrative simulation
examples are given in order to test the performance of the
controller. Section V is devoted to the corresponding experimental results, and finally, concluding remarks end this paper
in Section VI.
II. BACKGROUND ON OWC-BASED
WAVE -P OWER G ENERATION
A. Wave Model
Wave motion and wave-energy absorption are composed of
time-varying oscillatory phenomena. For the study of regular
waves, it is necessary to take into account the spectrum of
the wave climate that indicates the amount of wave energy at
different wave frequencies, as it may be observed in Fig. 1
(see also [9]). This representative spectrum of the wave climate
is obtained by an offshore wave rider buoy in deep water,
measuring a wide range of oceanographic parameters (wave
height, period, and direction).

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

Fig. 2.

1503

Capture chamber and ocean wave.

Fig. 3. Power coefficient versus flow coefficient.

Then, the regular wave is modeled, taking its height and

frequency to be equal to the peak one in Fig. 1, and can be
written as follows:


w g A2
4 h/
1+
Pwf = Cg Ed =
(1)
16 Tw
sinh(4 h/)
=

g Tw2
tanh(2 h/).
2

(2)

B. OWC System
As shown schematically in Fig. 2, OWC is basically a
device that converts the hydraulic energy of the waves into
an oscillating airflow. The principal component of an OWC is
the capture chamber, which is composed of a fixed structure
with its bottom open to the sea. The wave motion alternately
compresses and decompresses the air above the water level
inside the chamber. A conical duct is erected at the top of
the chamber with the power-takeoff system, consisting of the
turbine and the generator, located within this duct [10], [11].
The OWC energy equations are similar to those used for wind
turbines. In this way, the power available from the airflow in
the OWC chamber may be expressed as (3), where it can be
noted that the airflow kinetic-energy term vx3 a/2 is common
to wind-turbine analysis, whereas the air-pressure term dpvx a
is a representative term to this application. From (3), it can be
observed that the size of the duct and the airflow through the
duct play a significant role in the OWC system design. For a
complete description, see [11]


(3)
Pin = dp + vx2 /2 vx a.

C. Wells-Turbine Description
The Wells turbine is a specially designed axial-flow turbine
that converts an oscillating flow into a unidirectional rotary
motion for driving an electrical generator. That is, it always
rotates in the same direction both for inbound and outbound

airflow. The Wells turbine used in this work consists of a rotor

with eight blades and their chord lines lying in the plane of
rotation [6]. The equations used for the modeling of the turbine
are given by (see [7])


dp = Ca K (1/a) vx2 + (r r )2


Tt = Ct K r vx2 + (r r )2
Tt = dp Ct r a/Ca

(4)
(5)
(6)

= vx /(r r )

(7)

q = vx a

(8)

K = b l n/2.

(9)

For a Wells turbine and a given rotational speed, a linear

relationship can be established between the pressure drop and
the flow rate. This fact is employed to achieve matching between the turbine and the OWC, which also presents a similar
characteristic.
The torque and power developed by the turbine can be computed based on the power coefficient and the torque coefficient
against the flow coefficient. These relationships compose the
characteristic curves of the turbine under study, and their shape
may be seen in Figs. 3 and 4. The performance of the Wells
turbine is limited by the onset of the stalling phenomenon on the
turbine blades, which is clearly observable in Fig. 4, when the
flow coefficient approaches the 0.3 value. As shown, the turbine
efficiency drops drastically when the airflow rate exceeds this
critical value, depending on the rotational speed. The undesired
stalling behavior can be avoided or delayed if the turbine
accelerates fast enough in response to the incoming airflow. The
equation for the turbogenerator may be written as [8]
J(r /t) = Tt Tg .

(10)

This expression shows that the values of the turbine torque

and the electromagnetic torque, averaged over any sufficiently

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

be avoided by implementing an adequate fault-tolerant control

scheme in the plant.
III. C ONTROL S TATEMENT

Fig. 4. Torque coefficient versus flow coefficient.

long period of time (several wave periods), present approximately the same magnitude.
D. Technical Connection Requirements to Power Grids
The main requirements to be met by power-generation plants
of medium and high capacity, as in the case of wind farms
or wave-energy converters, to be able to operate within the
electricity market on equal conditions with conventional power
plants are established as follows: controllability of the active
power, controllability of the reactive power, and FRT capability
during voltage drops in the transmission system (see [18]).
1) Active-Power Control: The mismatch between the generated and consumed active powers in the network may cause
dangerous changes in the frequency of the grid. In particular, if
power-production plants were disconnected when a grid fault
occurs on the transmission system, it may contribute to the
voltage dip. Therefore, this actuation is not allowed.
2) Reactive-Power Control: The voltage regulation of the
grid is essential in electricity supply since a mismatch between
generated and consumed reactive power would cause dangerous
variations in the grid voltage. If the supply of reactive power is
less than the demanded one, the line voltage decreases, favoring
a grid fault.
3) FRT Capability: The stator flux of DFIG is calculated
using the following (see, e.g., [14]):
t
(V s Rs I s )dt.

s = s0 +

(11)

When a grid fault occurs on the transmission system causing

a voltage dip, the stator flux cannot follow the stator-voltage
variation, which provokes an increase of the current in the stator
windings. Because of the magnetic coupling between the stator
and the rotor, this current will also flow in the rotor. Moreover,
the rotor keeps rotating, and the high-slip generated introduces
overvoltages and overcurrents in the rotor that can damage the
RSC and the rotor (see [15] and [19]). This situation must

The control scheme is shown in Fig. 5, and its operation

is described hereafter. As shown in this figure, the DFIG is
attached to the Wells turbine by means of a gear box. The flow
through the turbine is regulated by equipping the device with
air valves. In this work, the use of a throttle valve mounted in
series with the turbine has been considered, located in the duct
connecting the chamber and the atmosphere.
During the normal working regime of the system, the controller regulates the active power generated by the stator to
obtain the maximum allowed active power without entering into
the Wells-turbine stalling behavior [13], [32]. The power reference is then obtained by applying the equation Psref = Kr3 ,
where the angular speed has been established to maximize the
energy production by avoiding the turbine stalling behavior and
where the constant K depends on the characteristic values of
the turbine. In turn, the proportionality to r3 (law derived from
turbomachinery dimensional analysis) ensures that the average
power of the generator adjusts itself to the incident-wave-power
level.
However, when a grid fault is detected, the primary objective
of the implemented control is the uninterrupted-operation feature of the wave-energy plant during the fault. For this purpose,
the rotor is short circuited by a crowbar, and the RSC is blocked
to protect it from the rotor high currents, causing loss of control
of active power (Ps ) and reactive power (Qs ) of the DFIG.
At the same time, as the Wells turbine continues rotating by
the action of the incident waves and in order to control the
acceleration of the turbogenerator group, the flow is reduced
accordingly with the modified power reference, regulating the
throttle air valve.
When the rotor current and the dc-link voltage are low
enough, the crowbar is turned off, and the RSC is restarted. The
stator active- and reactive-power references are also reduced in
order to limit the currents. On the other hand, the GSC keeps
the dc-link capacitor voltage constant.
After voltage recovery, a second crowbar-circuit activation
may happen if the dc-link voltage or the rotor currents exceed
their maximum allowed values. Meanwhile, the reactive-power
controllability of the GSC (Qgr ) is useful during the process of
voltage reestablishment. Finally, after a short recovery period,
the RSC is resumed to modify the stator references in order to
provide active and reactive power to the grid.
When the voltage and frequency of the network return to
steady-state values, the references are modified again, restoring
the normal functioning of the system.
Therefore, when a grid fault takes place, the power references
must be modified. To do so, numerous simulations have been
carried out in order to study the variation of the currents for
different pressure and voltage drops. The results of this study
are shown in Table I, where the reference change for the
different pressure and voltage variations may be observed. The
operation of the different parts of the control scheme is detailed
in what follows.

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

Fig. 5.

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Configuration scheme.
TABLE I
P RESSURE D ROP V ERSUS VOLTAGE D ROPAND
C ONTROLLER R EFERENCES

A. Airflow Control
In order to understand the dynamics of wave-powergeneration plants, we must take into account that the efficiency
of OWC-based plants equipped with Wells turbines is particularly affected by the intrinsically unsteady flow of air displaced
by the wave motion inside the chamber and because increasing
the airflow rate above a limit depending on the rotational speed
of the turbine is known to give rise to a rapid drop in the power
output of the turbine. The use of a throttle valve to control
the flow through the turbine and, in this way, to prevent or
reduce the stalling losses at the turbine is expected to increase
the amount of energy produced by the plant, particularly at
higher incident-wave power levels. This increase is expected to
be quite relevant for turbines whose performance is drastically
affected by rotor stalling, as in the case of the turbine used in
this work and most Wells turbines of fixed-pitch type.
The valve is governed by an actuator, which is designed to
allow modulation, in order to reduce or increase the flow rate
through the turbine accordingly with wave-activity variations.
The actuator drives the throttle valve into the demanded position against a counterbalance weight. Once in position, it is held
steady by an electromagnetic brake. In the event of a control

failure or if an emergency closure is demanded, the brake

supply is interrupted, and the valve closes under the influence
of the weight. For a detailed description, see [12].
In this paper, we use a modified antiwindup proportionalintegral differential (PID)-based controller to govern the output
of the generator so that the variable controlled is the power
generated, and the manipulated variable is the flow through the
turbine.
PID control schemes are composed of simple and wellknown techniques, and they are currently the most commonly
used controllers in industrial control real applications. In this
respect, these may be recalled in the last work of strm and
Miller Feedback Systems (see [28]), where it is stated that
more than 95% of all industrial control problems are solved
by PID control. In addition, since the final objective of the
proposed control system is to be implemented over a real plant,
one of the requisites was to maintain the air-valve control
as simple as possible while meeting the system performance
requirements. In this sense, other control schemes were initially
considered, as artificial-neural-network-based controllers (see
[13]) or robust sliding-mode controllers ([29]), but they were
finally discarded for the sake of implementation reliability.
One of the issues present when dealing with PID-based
controllers is related to the need of an appropriate tuning that
must be usually readjusted over the real system, due to the
differences that always exist between the model and the real
system. Nevertheless, results showed that the tuning procedure
was easily performed and provided an adequate response of the
system within the operating range of the system.
As usual, in this kind of controllers, the reference and the
feedback (averaged mean value of the generated power) generate the error signal e(t), which will serve as input to the
controller. Then, the control signal u(t) drives the valve into
the demanded position. In this way, the modulation of the valve
aims to adjust the pressure drop across the Wells-turbine rotor.
The general expression for a traditional PID, including a
proportional action modulated by an integral action to eliminate

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 6. Modified antiwindup PID-based airflow control.

the steady-state error and derivative action to stabilize the

system is given by

u(t) = K1 e(t) + K2

e(t)dt + K3

de(t)
dt

(12)

whose Laplace transform can be expressed as

1
U (s) = K1 1 +
+ Td s E(s).
Ti s

(13)

Nevertheless, since the control actuator is a throttle valve

subject to saturation, it was necessary to consider an integral
windup effect. It must be considered that the control valve
has physical limits so that once it has saturated, increasing the
magnitude of the control signal further has no effect. In this
case, there exists a difference between desired and measured
output-power values, and the resulting error will cause a steady
increment in the integral term. When the error term changes
its sign, the integral term starts to unwind, and this may cause
long time delays and possible instability. When this happens,
the feedback loop is broken, and the system runs in open loop,
independent of the output power, as long as the valve remains
saturated.
In order to avoid this phenomenon, the following modified
antiwindup controller, shown in Fig. 6, has been considered,
where an extra feedback path has been included that is generated by measuring the actual valve output u(t) subject to
saturation and defining the saturation error signal esat (t) as
the difference between the output of the controller upresat (t)
and the valve output. This corrective error signal is fed to the
input of the integrator through the gain Kc so that when there is
no saturation, its value is zero, having no effect on the control
signal, but when the throttle valve saturates, the signal is fed
back to the integrator in such a way that the integral action
ui (t) is decreased accordingly with the saturation error. This
implies that controller output upresat (t) is kept close to the
valve saturation limit, and integral windup is avoided.
B. VFC-Controlled DFIG Description
In order to understand the operation of the control scheme,
it is recommendable to previously describe the functioning
of the DFIG. This device composes a well-known induction-

machine configuration (see [16]) with a huge potential for the

development of distributed renewable-energy sources and, in
particular, for wave energy [17], [20][22]. The functioning
of the VFC-controlled DFIG can be described as follows.
As shown in Fig. 5, the DFIG stator windings are connected
directly to the grid, while the rotor windings are connected to
the VFC. The power flow between the rotor and the grid must
be controlled both in magnitude and phase to produce electrical
power, maintaining constant voltage and frequency values for
a wide range of speed sets. This function is performed by the
VFC, which is composed of a GSC connected to the grid, and
an RSC connected to the wound-rotor windings. They both
consist of insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) pulsewidth
modulation (PWM) converters, connected back-to-back by a
dc-link capacitor (see [23]). One of its main advantages is
the fact that this well-known topology represents a low-cost
commercial solution compared with other schemes. Further,
the generator and the grid are decoupled, within certain limits,
owing to the dc-link phase. This allows independent control of
both converters.
The control scheme of the RSC is shown in Fig. 7. This converter controls the active power (Ps ) and reactive power (Qs )
of the DFIG. In order to achieve independent control of them,
the instantaneous three-phase rotor currents irabc are sampled
and transformed into dq components iqr and idr in the statorflux-oriented reference frame. In this context, Ps and Qs can be
represented as functions of the individual current components.
Then, the reference active power is compared with the power
losses and compensated by the stator-flux estimator to form
the reference q-current iqr , which is then passed through a
standard proportionalintegral (PI) controller. Its output vqr1 is
in turn compensated by vqr2 to generate the q-voltage signal
vqr . The RSC reactive-power control is also used to maintain
a constant stator voltage within the desired range when the
DFIG is connected to weak power networks without reactivepower compensation. When connected to strong power grids,
this control may be set to zero.
The reference reactive power is compared with its actual
measurement to generate the error signal, which is passed
through a PI controller to provide the reference signal (idr ).
Then, it is compared with its actual signal (idr ) to generate
an error, which is then used to provide the required q-voltage
signal (vdr1 ) by means of a PI controller. In turn, this voltage is
compensated by vdr2 to generate the d-voltage signal vdr and

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

Fig. 7.

Control scheme of the RSC.

Fig. 8.

Control scheme of the GSC.

used by the PWM module to generate the IGBT gate-control

signals necessary to drive the RSC jointly with the q-component
signal vqr already obtained.
Analogously, Fig. 8 shows the control scheme of the GSC.
This converter controls the dc voltage and the reactive power
Qgr exchanged with the grid, with its objective being to keep
the dc-link capacitor voltage constant regardless of the magnitude and phase of the rotor power. In addition, the reactivepower Qgr control plays a crucial role during the fault recovery.
Its operation is somehow similar to the RSC: The actual
q-current signal (iqg ) is compared with its reference signal
(iqref ) to generate the error signal, which is used to provide the
required q-voltage signal (vqg1 ) by means of a PI controller. In
turn, it is compensated by vqs and vqg2 and used by the PWM
module to generate the IGBT gate control signals necessary to
drive the GSC converter. Similarly, the actual d-current signal
(idg ) is compared with its reference signal (idg ) to generate the
error signal, which is used to provide the required PI-controlled
q-voltage signal (vdg1 ). In turn, it is compensated by vds and
vdg2 and used by the PWM module to generate the IGBT gate-

1507

control signals necessary to drive the GSC converter jointly

with the q-component signals.
For a more detailed study about DFIG control devices by
means of RSC and GSC, see [20] and [21].
C. Crowbar Control
The use of crowbar circuits is a temporary measure usually
employed to protect the power-electronic components in the
DFIG controller when a grid fault takes place on the transmission system.
As shown in Figs. 9 and 10, it is basically composed of
a circuit mounted in parallel with the RSC, which activates
when the voltage at the dc-link capacitor reaches its maximum
value or when the rotor-current limit is exceeded (see [24]).
In response to these situations, the rotor windings are short
circuited by the crowbar circuit in order to protect the RSC,
causing loss of vector control. In this way, during the crowbar
activation time, the stator is not disconnected from the grid so as
to retrieve the generator control as soon as possible, as required

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 9. Diode-bridge crowbar.

Fig. 10. Antiparallel thyristor crowbar.

by the Grid Code. Even when the fault has been cleared, highcurrent transients may also produce a new activation of the
crowbar circuit.
The crowbar circuits may be implemented with different configurations. Some of the most popular ones are the antiparallel
thyristor crowbar, shown in Fig. 10, in which each rotor phase
is connected to external resistances and the three-phase diodebridge crowbar, shown in Fig. 9, where the resistive load is
coupled to a thyristor. For our case study, diverse crowbars with
different resistance values were modeled in order to identify
their optimum value. It must be taken into account that low
resistance values keep currents within safe limits but take a long
time to deenergize the rotor, while a high-resistance crowbar
deenergizes the machine rapidly but produce undesired current
peaks. On the other hand, it must be observed that the reactivepower consumption is significant while the crowbar is activated,

regardless of the resistance value since, under these conditions,

the DFIG acts as a conventional induction generator.
In order to regain control of the DFIG as soon as possible,
the short circuit performed by the crowbar has to be removed
whenever needed, and this can only be securely achieved by
replacing the thyristor by a gate turnoff (GTO) thyristor or an
IGBT. This modified circuit is called active crowbar since they
are fully controllable [30]. Although the diode-bridge configuration is a simpler device containing just a GTO thyristor,
in this paper, the antiparallel GTO thyristor circuit shown in
Fig. 10 has been chosen. In this way, the control law only
activates the crowbar in response to exceeding rotor current
or dc-link voltage signals and just for the necessary time to
prevent damages in the rotor converter, reconnecting it as soon
as possible to avoid the negative effects of a prolonged RSC
blocking.

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TABLE II
T URBINE AND I NDUCTION -G ENERATOR PARAMETERS

TABLE III
S YSTEM PARAMETERS

Fig. 11. Input pressure drop (in pascal).

IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS

In this section, the model of the Wells turbine and the OWC
module, jointly with the VFC-controlled DFIG, the crowbar,
and the airflow control presented in Sections II and III, respectively, have been implemented following the scheme shown
in Fig. 5. The turbine-generator parameters used are shown in
Table II, and the system parameters are shown in Table III.
The final objective of this work is to be applied to a real
experimental plant called NEREIDA MOWC. This project is
intended to demonstrate the successful incorporation of the
OWC technology with Wells-turbine power takeoff into a newly
constructed rubble-mound breakwater in the Basque location of
Mutriku, in the northern coast of Spain. The aim is to prove
the viability of this technology for future commercial plants.
For this reason, the simulation data and wave model have been
chosen, taking into account the spectrum of the wave climate
of Mutriku (see [9]). In this way, the input pressure drop may
be experimentally modeled, as shown in Fig. 11. On the other
hand, the balanced grid fault has been implemented as an
85% reduction of the grid voltage applied at 5.0 s and cleared
at 5.5 s.
For comparison purposes, an uncontrolled case study has
been initially studied without considering protective actions,
either airflow control or crowbar control. Under these conditions, the effect of the fault over the stator and rotor phase
currents may be observed in Figs. 12 and 13, presenting a
sudden increase with large peaks when the voltage dip starts
and recovers. In particular, it can be seen in Fig. 13 that the rotor
circuit suffers current peaks of about four times the prefault
levels within a few milliseconds that, as indicated before, could

Fig. 12. Stator phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

damage the RSC. As a result, the wave-power-generation plant

might be tripped out. Since this behavior is not allowed by the
new Grid Code, this is one of the problems that the proposed
controller must deal with. Analogously, the stator presents
overcurrents during the start and clearance of the fault, reaching
values of 1.5 per unit (p.u.) that quickly decrease, as shown
in Fig. 12. However, this behavior of the stator current has
a relative relevance since no vulnerable power electronics is
involved in the stator connection.
On the other hand, Fig. 14 shows the active and reactive
power generated at the stator terminals. It can be observed that
the active power drops rapidly down to zero when the fault is
introduced, while the reactive power consumption is slightly
increased. After the clearance of the fault, the active power rises
rapidly to its reference-power value after a transitory period
with strong oscillations. Analogously, the reactive power drops
down and, after a transitory period, recovers its reference value.
It can be seen that during the fault and, particularly, during
this transitory period, the generator absorbs a large amount of
reactive power from the grid contributing to the network fault.
As has been indicated before, this is another of the issues that
must be solved by the control scheme.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 13. Rotor phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 15. VDC -link voltage (in volts) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 16.

Rotor speed (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 17.

Turbine torque (in newton meters) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 14. Active and reactive power for the uncontrolled case.

In order to observe more clearly the effects of the fault

over the dc-link voltage and the rotor speed, a longer voltage
dip starting at 20 s and cleared at 40 s has been considered.
The results are shown in Figs. 1517. It may be seen that the
dc-link voltage presents an oscillating dynamics with values
ranging from 765 to 845 V. The reason is the RSCs inability
to deal with the high currents coming from the rotor. Moreover,
the rotor speed increases due to the imbalance between the
mechanical torque and the electromagnetic torque, as shown
in Fig. 16, causing clearly the uncontrolled acceleration of the
turbogenerator. This behavior can be dangerous and must be
also avoided by the controller. It can be seen in Fig. 17 that
the turbine torque value decreases during the voltage dip. It
may also be observed from (5) that Tt depends on Ct and r .
Similarly, it may be seen in Fig. 16 that the r value increases
due to the voltage dip, as expected. This increment affects the
value of since, from (7), decreases when r increases so
that, since the turbine is operating within the first zone of Fig. 4
(stalling avoidance), the torque coefficient Ct is decreasing, and
as a consequence, Tt decreases also despite the r increment.
Nevertheless, this torque decrement is not sufficient to avoid

the uncontrolled acceleration of the turbine-generator group, as

shown in Fig. 16.
For comparison purposes, the same examples have been
performed for the controlled case study, by considering the

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

Fig. 18. Control action u(t) for the controlled case.

1511

Fig. 20. Rotor phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

Fig. 19. Stator phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

proposed airflow control and crowbar control. In the simulations conducted, a double activation of the crowbar is observed,
one at the beginning of the fault and the second one at the
fault recovery. This is due to the aforementioned high rotor
currents produced by the fault (see Fig. 13) so that when
the fault is detected (some milliseconds), since the generator
cannot be disconnected from the grid, it is necessary to take
protective actions to block the RSC by activating the crowbar
circuit. At the same time, the airflow control acts, closing
the air valve and diminishing the turbine throttle. When the
voltage at the dc-link capacitor and the rotor phase currents
are low enough, approximately one hundred milliseconds after
applying the short circuit, the crowbar is turned off, and the
RSC starts switching, regaining the control to reduce both the
active- and reactive-power references. Once the grid voltage
has been recovered, similar disturbances affect the generator,
as shown earlier, and therefore, the crowbar is launched again.
Finally, after a short recovery period, the plant reference steadystate values are retrieved.
Fig. 18 shows the control action generated to regulate the flux
through the turbine. It may be observed that the valve is almost
closed during the voltage dip. In this way, it can be observed
that the stator and rotor phase currents shown in Figs. 19

Fig. 21. Active and reactive power for the controlled case.

and 20, respectively, are significantly lower than those in

Figs. 12 and 13, mainly due to controller activity and, in
particular, to the crowbar activation that allows partial energy
dissipation through suitably selected external resistances.
Analogously, the active and the reactive power generated
by the DFIG, shown in Fig. 21, may be compared with the
results of the uncontrolled case shown in Fig. 14: The activepower overshoot at voltage recovery is eliminated, reducing its
oscillatory dynamics, while giving reactive power to the grid
so that it contributes to the attenuation of the voltage dip, in
contrast with the uncontrolled case. In this context, Fig. 21
shows that the plant generates active and reactive power during
the fault period and, particularly, during the fault recovery, and
that only during 100 ms after the fault recovery, the generator
absorbs a little amount of power (less than 60% of the nominal
power).
In the same way, it may be observed in Fig. 22 that the
GSC controller improves the performance of the dc-link voltage
performance compared with the uncontrolled case (Fig. 15),
significantly reducing the voltage overshoots during the fault
period and fault recovery.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 22. VDC -link voltage (in volts) for the controlled case.

Fig. 23. Rotor speed (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

Similarly, Fig. 23 shows the rotor speed for the controlled

case where it can be clearly observed that the uncontrolled
acceleration shown in Fig. 16 has been avoided by the controller
by adequately regulating the airflow valve. In this sense, it can
be also observed that the loss of the vector control at fault
initiation and clearance while the RSC is blocked has no effect
on the rotor speed. Fig. 24 shows the turbine-torque reduction
as a consequence of the partial air valve closing during the
voltage dip. This reduction, stronger than that of Fig. 17, allows
successfully controlling the turbine speed.
These results indicate that the proposed control scheme is
effective for the dynamic voltage control, even when the plant
remains connected to the power network during a grid fault.
In this way, the controller significantly enhances the capability
of the wave-power-generation plant to ride through the grid
disturbances, improving its performance.
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
In order to prove the feasibility and goodness of the proposed schemes, in this Section, we are going to implement the

Fig. 24.

Turbine torque (in newton meters) for the controlled case.

proposed control design over an experimental system where a

digital signal processor (DSP)-based induction motor has been
used for turbine emulation purposes. The corresponding experimental control-system scheme may be observed in Fig. 25,
while Fig. 26 shows the physical system used for the real
implementation.
The emulation of the Wells turbine is performed by means
of a motor under speed control using the Micro Master
Siemens frequency converter. The dynamic behavior of the turbine has been implemented using MATLAB/Simulink environment (PC1) and the commercial real-time hardware dSPACE
DS1104 DSP-based digital-to-analog-converter system. In order to model the waves, it is necessary to consider the spectrum
of the wave climate. From these data and taking into account
the characteristics of the real chamber, it is possible to estimate
an average wave power for the standard input pressure drop so
that the turbine input may be experimentally modeled, as may
be seen in Fig. 11. The throttle valve controls the flow through
the turbine, and taking into account the linear relationship
between pressure drop and flow rate, the antiwindup PIDbased controller modulates the input pressure drop so that from
(4)(9), the corresponding speed is obtained, which serves as
reference to the VFC for turbine emulation purposes.
The DFIG system includes a wound-rotor ac generator and
the VFC. The VFC control structure and the PWM scheme,
as shown in Fig. 25, have been also implemented over a DSP
controlled by a second computer serving as Master (PC2),
concretely on a hybrid DSP56F807, the most powerful DSP of
the 56000 family, with a velocity of up to 40 million instructions
per second at 80-MHz core frequency. The main features of
this DSP are the following: twin periphery with two 6-channel
PWM modulator, four 4-channel 12-b analog-to-digital converters, and two quadrature decoders. Further, this DSP presents
the advantage of a wide connectivity (CAN, SCI, SPI, and
JTAG ports for debugging). The software is developed using
the CodeWarrior C-compiler of Metrowerk. The programming
of the different peripherals and algorithms of estimation and
control are developed based on this software.
The active crowbar is implemented by connecting an external
resistor across each phase of the rotor circuit. The value of

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

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Fig. 25. Experimental control-system scheme.

of the fault. When the fault is detected and the RSC is blocked
by the crowbar, the control over the active- and reactive-power
outputs is temporarily lost (see Figs. 3134). However, the
control of the active and reactive power is regained as soon as
possible, as observed in the aforementioned figures. On fault
clearance, the RSC is disabled again, and a peak reactive power
of 26% of the rated power occurs. Finally, after a short recovery
period, the RSC is reengaged to provide active and reactive
power to the grid. The experiments presented in this Section
provide similar results to those of the numerical simulations
of Section IV, verifying the FRT capability of the proposed
control.
VI. C ONCLUSION

Fig. 26. Real-system implementation.

the external resistance has been chosen as Rext = 20 Rr . The

crowbar controller has been programmed to enable and disable
the rotor converter IGBTs and the crowbar GTO thyristors as a
function of measured rotor currents.
In order to produce the grid voltage dip, the stator of the
generator has been connected to a voltage-dip generator, as
shown in Fig. 25. This device is based on an inductive divider
composed of a series and a parallel branch (see [31]). The
controller has been performed by means of a purpose-built
analog-circuit hardware board. In this manner, the grid fault
starts when the circuit breaker S is closed and ends when the
breaker opens and clears the fault current.
Referring to Figs. 2730, it can be seen in Fig. 28 and Fig. 30
that the stator and rotor phase currents of the controlled case
are lower during the fault and recovery periods compared with
the results of the uncontrolled case of Figs. 27 and 29, due to
the action of the airflow controller and, mainly, to the double
activation of the crowbar circuit at the beginning and clearance

The increasing penetration of renewable distributed powergeneration systems within the sometimes deregulated electricity markets has given rise to new technical requirements.
One of the most demanded requirements is an FRT capability
during voltage drops in the transmission system. In this sense,
although, at present, a specific normative requirement on wave
energy does not exist, the arising issues regarding power grid
faults are similar to those of more extended renewable energies
as in the case of wind energy and must also be solved by means
of adequate fault-tolerant control schemes. When a grid fault
occurs on the transmission system, the speed of the turbogenerator group increases, the induction generator injects large
peak currents, and the plant tends to increment the reactivepower consumption so that they might intensify the voltage dip
and contribute to the collapse of the power network. A simple
solution would be the automatic disconnection of the plant from
the grid in response to the power fault, but this policy could lead
to a series of chain disconnections that would produce a massive
power-network failure.
This paper has investigated the application of a new control
scheme to achieve the uninterrupted operation of OWC-based
wave-power-generation plants equipped with DFIGs during

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 27. Experimental results. Stator A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 28. Experimental results. Stator A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

Fig. 29. Experimental results. Rotor A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 30. Experimental results. Rotor A and B phase currents (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

balanced grid faults. For this purpose, an airflow valve control

and crowbar control has been proposed and coupled to the
VFC-controlled DFIG.

The controller operation can be detailed as follows: When

the fault is detected, the flow through the Wells turbine is
reduced according to the modified power reference, regulating

ALBERDI et al.: FRT CAPABILITY OF OWC-BASED WAVE-POWER-GENERATION PLANTS EQUIPPED WITH DFIG

1515

Fig. 31. Experimental results. Active power (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

Fig. 32. Experimental results. Active power (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

Fig. 33. Experimental results. Reactive power (in p.u.) for the uncontrolled case.

the throttle air valve during all the voltage-dip periods and the
following recovery period. Simultaneously, the RSC is blocked
by the crowbar in order to protect it from the overcurrents
in the rotor circuit. When the dc-link capacitor voltages and
the rotor phase currents decrease to the operating values, the
crowbar is switched off, and the RSC regains generator control
to reduce the active- and reactive-power references. Through
the whole process, the GSC remains connected, contributing
to the voltage reestablishment by regulating the reactive-power
generation to the grid. At the grid-voltage recovery, a second
crowbar-circuit activation may be required since high current
peaks and dc-link voltage instability may take place again.
During this voltage recovery period, the stator active- and
reactive-power references are adequately adjusted in order to
provide active and reactive power to the grid, and the RSC is
reconnected as soon as possible by the crowbar circuit. Finally,

when the voltage and frequency of the network return to steadystate values, the references are modified again, restoring normal
functioning of the system.
In particular, the simulations performed and the experimental
results obtained show that the aforementioned key problems,
rotor overcurrents, reactive-power increase, and uncontrolled
rotor acceleration, have been avoided or significantly improved.
On the one hand, the valve control, based on a modified
antiwindup PID control law, successfully governs the air valve
that modulates the pressure drop across the turbine in order
to control the acceleration of the turbine. On the other hand,
the crowbar provides great reductions of the stator and rotor
currents. In addition, the RSC successfully controls the active
power and reactive power of the DFIG while the crowbar is not
active, and the GSC controls the dc voltage and the reactive
power exchanged with the grid during all the process.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 58, NO. 5, MAY 2011

Fig. 34. Experimental results. Reactive power (in p.u.) for the controlled case.

It has been shown that the proposed control design allows

the uninterrupted operation of the wave-power-generation plant
during grid faults, contributing to the fault clearance by increasing the reactive-power production during the voltage dip.
Moreover, a significant improvement in machine control during
the fault and recovery periods is demonstrated, compared with
the uncontrolled case. In particular, the uninterrupted operation achieved complies with the Spanish Operating Procedure
12.3 regarding response requirements to voltage dips in wind
farms, which states that 150 ms after the onset of the fault and
150 ms after its recovery, the reactive-power consumption must
be under 60% of the nominal power.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers
who have helped to improve the initial version of this paper.
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Jan. 2011.

Mikel Alberdi was born in Bilbao, Basque Country,

Spain in 1965. He received the B.S.I.E. degree in
electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from the University of the Basque
Country, Bilbao, where he is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in communications, electronics, and control.
He is currently an Associate Professor of systems
and control engineering with the University of the
Basque Country. His present main research interest area is the applied control of dynamic systems,
particularly induction machines and power converters, and its application to
renewable energy systems, in particular, to wave-power generation plants.

Modesto Amundarain was born in Plentzia, Basque

Country, Spain in 1964. He received the B.S.I.E.
degree in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree
in electronic engineering from the University of the
Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain, where he is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree in communications,
electronics, and control.
He is currently an Associate Professor of systems
and control engineering with the University of the
Basque Country. His present main research interest area is the applied control of dynamic systems,
particularly induction machines and power converters, and its application to
renewable energy systems, in particular to wave-power generation plants.

1517

Aitor J. Garrido (M07) was born in Bilbao, Spain

in 1972. He received the M.Sc. degree in applied
physics, the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering,
and the Ph.D. degree in control systems and automation from the University of the Basque Country,
Bilbao, in 1999, 2001, and 2003, respectively.
Since 2000, he has held several research and
teaching positions with the Automatic Control and
Systems Engineering Department, University of the
Basque Country, where he is currently an Associate
Professor of systems and control engineering. He has
more than 100 papers published in main international conferences of the area,
book chapters, and JCR(ISI)-indexed journals, has served as reviewer in several
international indexed journals and conferences, and has supervised several
Ph.D. theses. His present main research interest area is the applied control of
dynamic systems, particularly induction machines, and its application to wave
power, as well as nuclear-fusion processes.

Izaskun Garrido (M07) was born in Bilbao, Spain

in 1967. She received the M.Sc. degree in applied
mathematics from the University of the Basque
Country (UPV-EHU), Bilbao, and the M.Sc. degree in numerical analysis and programming and
the Ph.D. degree in finite elements from Dundee
University, Dundee, U.K., in 1999.
She has held several positions with PIK
(Germany), ZIB (Germany) and UiB (Norway).
She has been an invited Researcher in institutions
such as Stanford University or LLNL (U.S.). Since
2004, she has been an Associate Professor of systems and control engineering
with the Automatic Control and Systems Engineering Department, UPV-EHU,
where she is also Vice Dean of Research and International Relations. She
has over 100 publications and has served as reviewer in international journals
and conferences. She has supervised several Ph.D. theses, and her present
main research interest area is numerical simulation and control applied to
wave-power generation plants, as well as fusion.

Francisco Javier Maseda was born in Bilbao,

Spain, in 1959. He received the B.Eng. degree,
the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering, and the
Ph.D. degree in control systems and automation from
the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, in
1983, 2002, and 2006, respectively.
Since 1986, he has been an Assistant Professor
with the Department of Control Systems and Automation, University of the Basque Country and is
currently a Full Professor of systems engineering
and automatic control. He has worked in industrial
companies in the fields of electrical and electronic engineering. He has several
publications in the fields of automation and advanced control of dynamic
systems and its application in induction-machine drives.