Converters fault-diagnosis in PMSG drives for wind turbine applications

In order to compensate the worldwide energy consumption that is still rising, the wind energy is becoming more and more important. For this reason, the analysis of wind energy conversion systems, in which the occurrence of faults has a high negative impact, becomes a very important issue. Considering this, the aim of this paper is to present some diagnostic methods for open-circuit faults in the two power converters of a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) drive for wind turbine applications. To achieve this goal, fault analysis is the first step, in order to know which parameters can be used for the diagnosis. The following step is the development of reliable diagnostic methods. Various simulation results, considering multiple faults in the grid-side converter and a single fault in the PMSG-side converter, are presented.