Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage System (SMES) for Improved Dynamic System Performance

A Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage System (SMES) consists of a high inductance coil emulating a constant current source. Such a SMES system, when connected to a power system, is able to inject/absorb active and reactive power into or from a system. The active power injected into the system is controlled by varying the duty cycle of the switches in the dc-dc chopper while the SMES coil is discharging into the system. The reactive power is controlled by the magnitude of the converter output voltage. The storage setup is tested on a WSCC 3 machine 9 bus system. The behavior of the system is tested for a three phase fault on the network at different locations. The transient behavior of the system is observed with and without the SMES unit. The SMES unit is able to damp out the post-fault oscillations within a short time.