1
A methodology for the estimation of synchronous
generator and excitation system parameters
E.P.T. Cari, L.F.C. Alberto, A. C. P. Martins, N. G. Bretas
Abstract In this paper, a methodology to estimate para-
meters of synchronous generator and its excitation system,
based on the trajectory sensitivity technique, is proposed.
Some alternatives are proposed for this technique regarding
a future on-line application.
The parameters of classical and two-axismodels of gen-
erator are estimated. An alternative is also proposed to
overcome problems related to differential equations with
variables that can not be measurable in the real system.
The methodology developed is also used to estimate the pa-
rameters of the excitation system (STR1 and DC1 type) in
a successful way.
Keywords Trajectory sensitivity, parameter estimation,
synchronous machine, excitation system.
I. Introduction
I N stability analysis of Electrical Power Systems, compu-
tational simulations are performed to predict the dyna-
mic behavior of the system specially when they are sub-
jected to perturbations. According to these simulations,
operation limits, settings of protection schemes and load
dispatch are designed.
However, uncertainties with relation to parameters (gen-
erator, excitation system, turbine governor) may exist
for several reasons, such as loss of parameter data, non-
documented gain , changing of parameter due to aging, etc.
The use of more accurate machine and excitation system
parameters can result in increases in overall power trans-
fer capacity and associated economic benefits. Alternately,
inaccurate simulation models could result in the system
being allowed to operate beyond safe margins.
Many methodologies of parameter estimation are pro-
posed in the literature with advantages and disadvantages.
However, only some of them are adequate for on-line es-
timation. Tests for parameter estimation purposes can be
divided into two groups: dynamic and steady state tests.
Steady state tests are required to establish base values
of quantities and to identify the parameter values related
to steady state operations. The dynamic tests consist in
providing a simple and safe disturbance to excite the unit
of interest in order to obtain its dynamic response.
This paper is focused on dynamic tests and the main
aim is to develop a methodology suitable for on-line appli-
cations, that is, without disconecting the machine from the
system.
Some dynamic test were already reported in the litera-
ture. However, many of them are not suitable for on-line
applications.
The Sudden short circuit tests [20], [11],for example, are
University of Sao Paulo, School of Engineering of Sao Carlos, Sao
Carlos SP - Brazil
the more traditional and relative simple test to estimate
parameters. However, the the machine is submitted a me-
chanic effort and only axis-dparameters can be estimated
by mean of this test.
Load rejection tests [22], [6], [2] are performed in es-
pecial operation points to obtain both d-axisand q-
axisparameters. However to reach the condition for the
test is necessary many trip of breaker which is not prac-
tice.
Tests including perturbations, for example, Pseudo Ran-
dom Binary Sequence [21], [13], were also reported. These
test can be performed on-line, but its difficult, in the prac-
tice, to obtain signal to estimate all the parameters of syn-
crhonous machine.
After the test is performed, parameters are estimated by
some minimization technique, such as:
1. Least Squares (LS) as in [15], the Weighted Least
Squares (WLS) [16] and Generalized Least Squares (GLS)
[7].
2. Curve fitting procedures, as for example, polynomial fit-
ting [11], etc.
3. Trajectory sensitivity [1], [19] and [9].
4. Techniques based on series, for example, Harley Series
[17].
The trajectory sensitivity methodology was chosen be-
cause this test can be performed on-line and it permits
representing nonlinear models of electrical machines and
excitation systems. However there are some issues to be
overcome. One problem, reported in [19], is related to si-
multaneus parameter estimation. Other problem is related
to variables which can not be measured of the real system.
This paper presents some new approaches for parameter
estimation using a methodology based on the trajectory
sensitivity.
The proposed new aproach:
Changes in the original diferential equations when they
have variables that can not be measured. This was applied
successfully for classical model of the synchronous machine.
Consider as parameters some initial conditions of ini-
tial conditions of differential equations which can not be
obtained in the Real system.
The remainder of paper is organized as follow:
In Section 2, identification technique is presented. The
power system for the test is presented in Section 3. The
results ,on the identification of synchronous machine para-
meters (classical and two-axismodels), are presented in
Section 4. In Section 5, the results on the identification
of excitation system parameters of ST1A and DC1 models
are presented .Finally, a summary of the contributions are
presented in Section 6.
 2

II. Sensitivity method for nonlinear models

Consider a nonlinear system modeled by

d
x(t) = f (x(t), p, u(t))
dt
y(t) = g(x(t), p, u(t)) (1)

where x is the state vector, y is the output vector, u is

the input vector and p is the model parameter vector to
be estimated. Functions f and g are nonlinear, continuous
and Lipschitz with respect to x, p and u. Let pi be the
ith component of p, and f and g be differentiable with re-
spect to pi . The sensitivities x(t) y(t)
pi and pi are computed
respectively as:

d x(t) f (x(t), p, u(t)) x(t) f (x(t), p, u(t))

= +
dt pi x pi pi
y(t) g(x(t), p, u(t)) x(t) g(x(t), p, u(t))
= + (2)
pi x pi pi

The fitting of the parameters vector p is formulated as an

optimization problem to minimize the error function (J),
which is given by:
Z To
1
J(p) = (y v)t (y v)dt (3)
2 0

where, v is the output vector of Real system, y is the

output of the Mathematical modelof system (1) and To
is a period of the test.
Given an initial value p = po this optimization problem Fig. 1. Steps of the identification method.
can be solved by computing the sensitivity:
To
y t
Z
J(p) d. Compare the outputs of both Real systemand Ma-
= (y v)dt|p=pi (4)
p 0 p thematical modeland compute J. Exit if the error function
J(p)
(J) is less than a especific error.
Let G(p) = p ,
expanding it in Taylor series around e. Use the measured input data to simulate the output of
p = pi and neglecting high order terms one has the trajectory sensitivity y
p .
G(pi )
f. Compute .
G(p) = G(pi ) + p 4p. g. Compute J p .
G(p)
Let = p then 4p = 1 G(pi ). h. Compute 4p(i + 1) and fit the parameters.
i. Compute the outputs of the Mathematical modeland
The parameters are fitted for the ith iteration by go to step d.
Since v, y, yp are measured at discrete time intervals,
p(i+1) = p(i) + p(i+1) (5) the integrals above are replaced by summations. For more
details see [4].
can be computed differentiating (4), thus
III. Power system model
T
y t y
Z
= dt|p=pi (6) The power system used in this study is represented by
0 p p
the scheme of figure 2.
In figure 1 is shown the diagram of the identification The same test condition is used in all cases. A three-
method. It envolves the following steps: cycle fault applied to one of the transmission lines and it
a. Define the model structure and the unknown parameters is cleared by removing the transmission line at t = 0.07
to be estimated. second.
b. Register the measurements of Real system. The data of the Real systemused in the next sections
c. Compute the outputs of the Mathematical model. were generated by a computer . In spide of that we be-
 3

Fig. 2. Power system model.

lieve that the experience obtained with these tests will be

utilized for a future practical application. Fig. 5. Active Power(p.u.) before(a) and after(b) estimation param-
eter respectively.
IV. Parameter estimation for the synchronous
generator Table I shows the identification of both parameters,
A. Parameters of the classical model where the approximation error is below 2%. The step used
in the simulations was 1 ms.
The classical model is represented by a constant source
(E) behind of a transient reactance (x0d ), as shows the figure initial final true error
3. The parameters to be identified in the classical model par. values value value (%)
are the transient reactance (x0d )and the inertia constant (H) H 4.025 3.5229 3.5 0.654
of the generator. x0d 0.345 0.2961 0.3 -1.3
TABLE I
Classical model.

Fig. 3. Classical model of generator.
The swing equations for the classical model are:
B. two-axismodel
The power system used to estimate the parameters of
this model is the same that presented in the test before.
The equations for the two-axismodel, are given by:

wo EVt
m = m (8)
w = [Pm 0 sin( )] o
2H xd wm = [Pm Eqm0 0
Iq Edm Id (9)
2H
= w (7)
D
(xd x0q )Id Iq m ]
The equations in (7) can not be used directly by the pro- o
posed methodology as they have variables which are not 0
1 0 0
Eqm = 0 [Ef d Eqm + (xd xd )Id ]
Tdo
(10)
possible to be measured (internal voltage is not measured).
The use of an observer is also impossible, as it depends on 0 1 0
Edm = [Edm + (xq x0q )Iq ] (11)
the parameter to be estimated. Therefore the news vari- 0
Tqo
ables and news equations were used which are easily mea-
sured. The changes made are shown in figure 4. The input The currents are calculated in each iteration by:
0
Eb cos(m ) Eqm
Id = 0
xd + ZI
0
Eb sen(m ) + Edm
Iq = 0
xq + ZI

where Eb is the voltage magnitude in the infinite bus and

Fig. 4. Changes of the equations for classical model.
variables are (Qe , Vt , Vt , ) and the output variable is Pe .
The initial values for the mathematical model correspon-
d to +15% of the real values. Applying the test, the pa-
rameters were calculated satisfactorily using the proposed
methodology after 16 iterations. The output signals of both
real and mathematical models are shown in figure 5.
ZI is the series impedance obtained from the matrix YBus
for the post-fault condition.
The difficulty here is that the state Eq0 and Ed0 are not
available for measurements. Thus, the dynamic of both
Eq0 and Eq0 were considered internal variables of the system
0 0
and the initial condition Eqo and Eqo were considered as
parameters to be estimated. Then the vector parameter is
givem by:
 4

p=[xd x0d Tdo 0

xq x0q Tqo0 0
Eqo 0
Edo ]
In this case, Ef d is chosen as an input and as out-
put. The input and the output variables of the mathe-
matical modeland the real systemare shown in figure
6. The sub-index mmeans variable of the mathematical
modeland the sub-index rmeans variable of the real
system.
Fig. 7. ST1A Excitation System.

The same test condition used before was adopted here.

In the simulation, the limits of the excitation system were
Efmax =5 p.u, and Efmin =-5 p.u. and the integration step
was 2.5 ms.
The output variable before and after parameter estima-
tion is shown in Figure 8. Results are shown in Table III.

Fig. 6. Input and output varibles for two-axismodel.

The initial values for the mathematical model correspond

0 0
to +30% of the real values (including Eqo e Edo as parame-
ters). The parameters were estimated by the methodology
after 9 iterations. Fig. 8. Field voltage (Ef d )(pu) before (a) and after(b) parameter
The results of the estimation process are presented in estimation
Table II.
parameter V. Initial V. final V. Real Error(%) The estimation error was below 3%.
xd 2.3530 1.8102 1.8100 0.011
x0d 0.3900 0.300 0.300 0.0 initial final true Error
0 p value value value (%)
Tdo 10.400 8.0003 8.0000 0.03
xq 2.2880 1.7587 1.7600 -0.07 KA 150 199.32 200 -0.34
x0q 0.8450 0.6499 0.6500 -0.015 TR 0.02 0.0487 0.05 -2.6
0
Tqo 1.3000 0.9997 1.000 -0.03 TABLE III
0
Eqo 1.5161 1.1661 1.1662 -0.008 Parameters of excitation system ST1A.
0
Edo -0.4044 -0.3110 -0.3110 -0.0003
TABLE II
Parameters of two-axismodel of synchronous machine.

.2 Excitation system DC1

V. Parameter Estimation for the Excitation The excitation system DC1 is shown in figure 9.
systems
The trajectory sensitivity methodology was used to es-
timate the parameters of two types of excitation systems:
ST1A and DC1 [10].

.1 Excitation system ST1A

The excitation system ST1A is shown in the figure 7.
dz 1
= (KA (Vref Vt ) z)) (12)
dt TR
The parameters to be identified are TR and KA . The input
variable is Vt , and the output variable is Ef d . Fig. 9. DC1 Excitation system.
 5

The differential equations for this model are: parameter Initial Final True Error(%)
TR 0.04 0.05 0.05 0
dEv 1 TA 0.072 0.06 0.06 0
= (Vt Ev ) (13)
dt TR KA 40.00 50 50 0
dEiii 1 TE 0.0416 0.052 0.052 0
= (KA (Vref Eiv Ev ) Eiii ) (14)
dt TA KE -0.0462 -0.0386 -0.0385 0.259
dEf dm 1 A 0.001 0.0012 0.012 0
= (Eiii (AeBEf dm + KE )Ef dm ) (15)
dt TE B 1.011 1.264 1.264 0
dEiv 1 dEf d TF 0.800 1.00 1.00 0
= (KF Eiv ) (16) KF 0.0666 0.0832 0.0832 0
dt TF dt
TABLE IV
where, the sub-index mmeans variables of the mathe-
Parameter of DC1 type excitation system.
matical model.
The terminal voltage is chosen as an input and the field
voltage is chosen as output variable, as shown in figure 10.
differential equations were transformed so that the new
state variables can be measured from the real system.
An inconvenience, on two-axismodels, is the necessity
to know the initial conditions of the differential equations of
0
the internal voltage in the quadrature and direct axis (Eqo
0
and Edo ), because those values are functions of the parame-
ters to be estimated. This inconvenience was overcome by
considering those values as parameters to be simultaneusly
identified by the methodology.
The methodology was applied successfully to the excita-
tion systems ST1A and DC1. In the case of the excitation
system DC1, the methodology estimated simulaneously its
Fig. 10. Input and output variables for Excitation System DC1 9 parameters.

In this test the initial parameters values of the model References

correspond to +/-20% of the real values. In such condi-
tion the methodology estimated successfully 9 parameters
of this model.
Figure 11 shows the field voltage before and after the pa-
rameter estimation. The estimated parameters are shown
in Table IV.
Fig. 11. Field voltage before and after parameter estimation
VI. Conclusions
The trajectory sensitivity methodology was used to esti-
mate the parameters of synchronous machines and its exci-
tation systems. The parameters of the classical, and two-
axismodel were estimated successfully by the methodol-
ogy.
An inconvenience of classical model is respect to vari-
ables which can not be measured. Therefore the original
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