Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Neural control for voltage dips ride-through of oscillating water column-based

wave energy converter equipped with doubly-fed induction generator
Mikel Alberdi*, Modesto Amundarain, Aitor Garrido, Izaskun Garrido
University of the Basque Country, Dept. Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, Plaza de la Casilla 3, 48012 Bilbao, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 9 June 2011
Accepted 12 April 2012
Available online xxx

The increasing penetration of renewable distributed power generation systems within electricity
markets has given rise to new technical requirements. One of the most demanded skills is a fault-ridethrough capability during voltage drops in the transmission system. This paper investigated the application of a neural control scheme to achieve the uninterrupted operation of oscillating water columnbased wave energy converter equipped with doubly-fed induction generator during balanced grid
faults. It is proposed an innovative solution consisting of a control scheme that suitably coordinates the
air ow control, the active crowbar and the variable frequency converter, fullling the Spanish Grid Code.
Besides, the variety of cases presented due to different sea states (amplitude and frequency) and characteristics of the grid fault (voltage drop and fault period), makes it necessary to adequately modify the
references used by the controllers in order to achieve the desired fault-ride-through capability. In this
sense, it has been implemented a neural control that adapts the controller references according to the
pressure drop and voltage reduction, improving the controllability of the active and reactive power and
the fault-ride-through capability during voltage drops.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Neural control
Doubly-fed induction generator
Low voltage ride through
Active crowbar
Wave energy
Wells turbine

1. Introduction
In the last years, there has been a worldwide resurgent interest
for wave energy amid increasing concerns about global warming
and reliability of oil and gas supplies. Harnessing the immense
wave power in the oceans can be part of the solution to our present
energy problems. Worldwide, the energy production potential for
ocean wave energy has been estimated about 8000e80,000 TW h/
year [1], and the actual development in this sector is comparable to
that of wind energy a few decades ago, with similar economic
potentials.
In this sense, many governments are adopting new energy
generation and renewable energy guidelines towards an ecologically sustainable society. As an example, the UK Government has
risen the environmental challenge with an agreement on goals to
generate 15% of UK electricity demand from renewable sources by
2015 with the aim of reaching 20% by 2020 [2]. 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 or Spain that represent a major
impact on the characteristics of the power network [3].
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 34 946014350; fax: 34 946014300.
E-mail address: mikel.alberdi@ehu.es (M. Alberdi).
0960-1481/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.renene.2012.04.014

Many of these renewable power generation plants incorporate

doubly-fed induction generators (DFIG) to allow variable rotor
speed operation. Nevertheless, the DFIG is very sensitive to voltage
dips. Grid faults are short term voltage drops in one or more phases
of the grid system, often caused by the transient earthing of one or
more phases on the transmission lines. The fault period is the
duration of the voltage dip and the fault recovery time is the
period starting at the clearance of the fault and ending when the
voltages return to balanced steady-state values. In particular,
balanced faults are those causing an equal dip in voltage on all three
phases [4].
When a grid fault occurs on the transmission system, the speed
of the turbo-generator 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 the 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. However, the politics of disconnecting the
system from the grid may propitiate the collapse of the power
network, so new Grid Codes oblige the distributed power generation systems to remain connected to the Point of Common Coupling
(PCC) during the fault to avoid massive chain disconnections so that

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

the implementation of an adequate Fault-Ride-Through (FRT)

capability is indispensable [5].
In this sense, although at present day it does not exist a specic
normative on wave energy, the arising issues regarding power grid
faults are similar to those of more extended renewable energies as
it is the case of wind energy, and must also be solved by means of
adequate fault tolerant control schemes. A solution employed is the
use of a control scheme that suitably coordinates the air ow
control, the crowbar and the Variable Frequency Converter (VFC) so
as to allow the plant to remain in service during the grid fault, and
to contribute to its attenuation [6]. But the different cases presented due to different sea states (amplitude and frequency) and
characteristics of the grid fault (voltage drop and fault period),
make it also necessary to modify the references used by the control
to overcome the voltage sag.
The innovative aspect exploited in this paper is the application
of a neural control to change the reference values of the air ow
control, the crowbar and the VFC according to the pressure drop
and voltage dip, improving the controllability of the active and
reactive power and the FRT capability during voltage drops.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides
the necessary background. In Section 3, the uninterrupted operation feature during grid faults is explained. In Section 4 the
behavior of the wave power generation plant under different sea
scenarios and different voltage drop grid faults is studied. In Section
5 the proposed neural control is presented. In Section 6 some
demonstrative simulation examples are given in order to test the
performance of the controller, and nally concluding remarks end
the paper in Section 7.
2. Theoretical analysis and modelling
In this section we will present the necessary theoretical analysis
to model the different components of the systems, i.e.: Articial
Neural networks (ANN), wave model, oscillating water column and
Wells turbine.
2.1. Articial neural network design
ANNs have been used to perform complex tasks in various elds
of application including pattern recognition, identication, classication, speech, vision and control systems [7]. The most widely
used neural network algorithm is back-propagation. This algorithm
attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the weights of the
neurons using a gradient descent optimization algorithm. In the
back-propagation learning, the actual outputs are compared with
the target values to derive the error signals, which are propagated
backward layer by layer for the updating of the synaptic weights in
all the lower layers [8].
The general formula for the activation of each unit in the
network (except for the inputs units whose activation is clamped by
the input vector) is given by:

Aj w; h; y

1e

1
PN

17

Fig. 1. Feed-forward neural network.



yi Aj v; hj ; x

(2)



zi Aj w; oj ; y

(3)

Nz 
Nc X
2
1 X
zj;c  tj;c
2 c1

where: v strength of the couplings between layer x and y hj bias of

hidden unit j w strength of the couplings between layer y and z oj
bias of output unit j c input vectors with their corresponding target
vectors Nc total number of cases zj actual value (activation) of
output unit j Nz total numbers of output units tj target value of unit j.
2.2. Waves model
The rst objective of our analysis is to model the input to the
system. The Linear or Airy Wave Theory is generally accurate
enough for many engineering purposes and specically for control
design purposes [9]. Linear Wave Theory describes ocean waves as
simple sinusoidal waves as shown in Fig. 2.
The waves model considered has been particularized for the
case of the NEREIDA MOWC, a project involving the integration of
an OWC system with Wells turbines in the new rockll breakwater
at the harbour in Mutriku, located in the Basque coast of Spain. The
breakwater is located at 7 m (h) of the still water level (SWL) [10].
The average height of waves in the Cantabrian coast is less than two
meters with a period (T) between 8 and 12 s [11]. According to these
data, the most suitable approach in our case is to use the linear

(1)

wj;i yi hj
i1

where: wj,i strength of the coupling between unit j and i N total

numbers of units in the layer yi activation of unit i hj threshold or
bias for unit j.
The most used ANN design consist of a layer of input units (x),
one or more layers of hidden units (y), depending of the chosen
network design and a layer of output units (z) as may be seen on
Fig. 1. The activation of a hidden unit, output unit and the total error
measuring the performance of the network E are dened as:

(4)

j1

Fig. 2. Scheme of OWC and ocean wave.

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M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

wave theory for transitional water (0.25  h/l > 0.05), where l is
the wavelength dened by:

gT 2
tanh2p h=l
2p

(5)

Then, the regular wave can be written as following (for a more

detailed description see Ref. [12]):

Pwavefront

rw g A2 l
16T


1

4 p h=l
sinh 4 p h=l


(6)

where: Pwavefront incident wave power rw density of water g acceleration of gravity A wave amplitude.
2.3. Oscillating water column system
As shown schematically in Fig. 2, the Oscillating Water Column
(OWC) is basically a device that converts the hydraulic energy of the
waves into an oscillating air ow. The principal component of an
OWC is the capture chamber, which is compounded by a xed
structure with its bottom open to the sea. The wave motion inside
the chamber alternately compresses and decompresses the air
above the water level inside the chamber. A conical duct is erected
on the top of the chamber with the power take-off system, consisting of the turbine and the generator, located within this duct
[13].
The OWC energy equations are similar to those used for wind
turbines. In this way, the power available from the air ow in the
OWC chamber may be expressed as eqn. (7), where it can be noted
that the air ow kinetic energy term Vx ar=2 is common to wind
turbine analysis whereas the air pressure term pVx a, is a representative term to this application. From eqn. (7), it can be observed that
the size of the duct and the air ow through the duct play
a signicant role in the OWC system design. For a complete
description see Ref. [14]:

Pin

p r Vx2 =2 Vx a

(7)

where: Pin power available to turbine in OWC duct p pressure at the

turbine duct r air density Vx air ow speed at the turbine a area of
turbine duct.

Fig. 3. Power coefcient vs ow coefcient.

Q Vx a

(12)

K r b l n=2

(13)

where: b blade height Ca power coefcient Ct torque coefcient dp

pressure drop across rotor K a constant l blade chord length n
number of blades Q ow rate r mean radius Tt torque produced by
turbine f ow coefcient ur angular velocity of the rotor.
For a Wells turbine and a given rotational speed, a linear relationship can be established between pressure drop and the ow
rate. This fact is employed to achieve the matching between
a turbine and the OWC, which also presents a similar characteristic.
Moreover, the power coefcient and the torque coefcient against
the ow coefcient relationships compose the characteristic curves
of the turbine under study and their shape may be seen on Fig. 3
and Fig. 4.
The performance of the Wells turbine is limited by the onset of
the stalling phenomenon on the turbine blades which is clearly

2.4. Wells turbine description

The Wells turbine is a specially designed axial-ow turbine that
converts an oscillating ow into a unidirectional rotary motion for
driving an electrical generator. That is, it always rotates in the same
direction both for inbound and outbound air ow [15e17]. The
Wells turbine used in this work consists of a rotor with eight blades
and their chord lines lying in the plane of rotation. The equations
used for the modelling of the turbine are given by Ref. [18]

dp Ca K

. h
i
1 a Vx2 r ur 2

i
h
Tt Ct K r Vx2 r ur 2

(8)

(9)

Tt dp Ct r a=Ca

(10)

f vx=r u
r

(11)

Fig. 4. Torque coefcient vs ow coefcient.

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

19

Fig. 5. Conguration scheme.

observable in Fig. 4 when the ow coefcient approaches the 0.3

value. As it is shown, the turbine efciency drops drastically when
the air ow 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 air ow. The equation for the turbo-generator may be
written as ref. [19]:

J

vur
vt


Tt  Tg

(14)

where: J moment of inertia of the system Tg torque imposed by

generator.
This expression shows that the values of the turbine torque and
the electromagnetic torque, averaged over any sufciently long
period of time (several wave periods), present approximately the
same magnitude.
3. Uninterrupted operation feature during grid faults
As shown in Fig. 5, the DFIG is attached to the Wells turbine and
the ow through the turbine is regulated by equipping the device
with a throttle-valve mounted in series with the turbine.
When a grid fault is detected, the primarily objective of the
implemented control is the uninterrupted operation feature of the
wave energy plant. For this purpose, the rotor is short-circuited by
a crowbar and the Rotor Side Converter (RSC) blocked to protect it
from the rotor high currents, causing the loss of control of active
power (Ps) and reactive power (Qs) of the DFIG. In order to control
the acceleration of the turbo-generator group, the ow is typically

Fig. 6. Modied anti wind-up PID-based air ow control.

reduced accordingly with the modied power reference, regulating

the throttle air valve.
When the rotor current and DC-link voltage are low enough, the
crowbar is turned off and the RSC is restarted. Meanwhile, the Gride
Side Converter (GSC) keeps the DC-link capacitor voltage constant
and the grid side reactive power controllability of the GSC (Qgr) is
useful during the process of voltage reestablishment.
After voltage recovery, a second crowbar circuit activation may
happen if the rotor currents or the DC-link voltage exceed their
maximum allowed values. When the voltage and frequency of the
network return to steady-state values, the references are modied
again, restoring the normal functioning of the system. For a detailed
description see Ref. [6].
The operation of the different parts of the control scheme is
detailed in what follows.
3.1. Air ow control
The purpose of the throttle-valve is to regulate the pressure
difference across the turbine in order to control the acceleration of
the turbo-generator group, by throttling the valve in the duct. The
valve is governed by an actuator, which is designed to allow
modulation, in order to reduce or increase the ow rate through the
turbine accordingly with the wave activity variations. The actuator
drives the throttle-valve into the demanded position against

Fig. 7. Control scheme of the RSC.

20

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Fig. 8. Control scheme of the GSC.

a counterbalance weight. Once in position, it is held steady by an

electromagnetic brake [20]. 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 inuence of the weight. From
a control point of view it may be represented as a control gain Kv
governing the air ow entering to the turbine [21,22], included in
the saturation block of Fig. 6.
PID control schemes compose simple and well-known techniques and they are currently the most commonly used
controllers in industrial control real applications [23]. However
in this paper, we use a modied anti wind-up PID-based
controller. Since the control actuator is a throttle-valve subject to
saturation, it was necessary to consider an integral wind-up
effect. In order to avoid this phenomena, the following modied anti wind-up controller shown in Fig. 6 has been considered,
where it has been included an extra feedback path that is
generated by measuring the actual valve output u(t) subject to
saturation, and dening 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 integrated and
modulated by means of a control gain Kc and then fed to the
output of the controller, 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 output of the
controller 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 wind-up is avoided.

Fig. 9. Antiparallel IGBT transistor active crowbar.

Fig. 10. Representative spectrum of the wave climate.

3.2. DFIG control

As it is schematically shown in Fig. 5, the DFIG is directly connected to the network through the stator while the rotor is connected to the grid through a VFC, which only requires handling
a fraction (25%e30%) of the nominal power to achieve total control
of the generator. This function is performed by the VFC, which is
composed of a GSC connected to the grid, and a RSC connected to
the wound rotor windings [24].
They both consist of insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT)
pulse width modulation (PWM) converters, connected back-toback by a DC-link capacitor [25]. Besides, the generator and the
grid appear decoupled each other, within certain limits, thanks to
the DC-link phase. This allows independent control of both
converters.
The control scheme of the RSC is depicted in Fig. 7. This
converter controls the active power (Ps) and reactive power (Qs) of
the DFIG [26]. In order to achieve independent control of them, the
instantaneous three-phase rotor currents irabc are sampled and
transformed into d-q components iqr and idr in the stator-ux

Fig. 11. Input pressure drop (Pa) for calm seas.

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Fig. 12. Input pressure drop (Pa) for rough seas.

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 its actual measurement to
generate the error signal, which is passed through a PI controller to
provide the reference q-current i*qr, which is then compared with
its actual signal (iqr) to generate an error, which serves as input to
the PI voltage controller. Its output vqr1 is in turn compensated by
vqr2 to generate the q-voltage signal vqr.
The RSC reactive power control is used to maintain a constant
stator voltage within the desired range when the DFIG is connected
to weak power networks without reactive power 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 (i*dr). Then, it is
compared with its actual signal (idr) to generate an error, which is
then used to provide the required d-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 used by the PWM module
to generate the IGBT gate control signals necessary to drive the
RSC converter jointly with the q-component signal vqr already
obtained.

Fig. 13. Rotor speed (pu) for rough seas and 85% reduction of the grid voltage.

21

Fig. 14. Rotor speed (pu) for calm seas and 85% reduction of the grid voltage.

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, being its objective to keep the DC-link
capacitor voltage constant regardless of the magnitude and phase
of the rotor power. Besides, the reactive power Qgr control plays
a crucial role during the fault.
For a more detailed study about DFIG control devices by means
of RSC and GSC see Ref. [27].
3.3. Active crowbar control
As shown in Fig. 9 the crowbar is basically composed by 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 [28]. In response to these situations,
the rotor windings are short-circuited by the crowbar circuit in
order to protect the RSC, causing the 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 it is required by the Grid Code. Even when the fault

Fig. 15. Active power (W) for calm seas and 15% reduction of the grid voltage.

22

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Fig. 18. Controller references set v2.

Fig. 16. Active power (W) for calm seas and 85% reduction of the grid voltage.

has been cleared, high current transients may also produce a new
activation of the crowbar circuit [29].
In this work the antiparallel IGBT transistor circuit shown in
Fig. 9 has been chosen since it is fully controllable. 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.

4. Problem formulation: different sea states and

characteristics of the grid fault
In order to compare the behavior of the wave power generation
plant when a grid fault occurs on the grid, it is necessary to take into
account different sea scenarios, i.e., calm seas and rough seas, and
grid faults of different voltage drops.
Wave motion and wave energy absorption compose timevarying 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. 10 [11]. This

Fig. 17. Controller references set v1.

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).
In this sense, a calm sea scenario may be represented by regular
waves that do not produce the stalling behavior in the turbine as
can be shown in Fig. 11. Analogously, a rough sea may be represented by regular waves that produce the stalling in the turbine and
modelled taking its height and frequency equal to the peak one in
Fig. 10, as can be shown in Fig. 12.
The application of the same controller references to the wave
power generation plant for different sea scenarios, provoke
different responses of the plant for the same type of grid fault (in
this case, of 85% reduction of the grid voltage). In this sense the
plant working with rough seas ride through the fault without
problems, controlling the acceleration of the turbo-generator as
shown in Fig. 13, while for calm sea, the speed of the group
decreases too much, causing it to disconnect from the network, as
shown in Fig. 14.
On the other hand, the application of the same controller
references to the plant working under the same sea scenario when
a grid fault of different voltage drop occurs on the transmission
system, presents a different reaction in the wave power plant. In
particular, when the plant suffers a 15% reduction of voltage, it rides
through it without problems as it can be seen in Fig. 15, whereas

Fig. 19. Controller references set v3.

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

23

Table 1
Pressure drop vs voltage drop and controller references.
dpmax
4000
4000
4000
4000
4000
5000
5000
5000
5000
5000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000
7000
7000
7000
7000
7000

Voltage
reduction

Reference
set

10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%
10%
25%
50%
75%
100%

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
00 4
00 3
1
00 6
00 5
00 4
00 3

1
00 7
00 5
00 3
00 1
1
00 7
00 5
00 3
00 1
1
00 7
00 5
00 3
00 1
1
00 7
00 5
00 3
00 1

0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1

0
00 3
00 3
00 3
00 3
0
00 3
00 3
00 3
00 3
0
00 3
00 3
00 3
00 3
0
00 3
00 3
00 3
00 3

v0
v1
v1
v1
v1
v0
v1
v1
v2
v2
v0
v2
v2
v3
v3
v0
v3
v3
v3
v3

under a voltage drop of 85% the plant consumes active power

during all the fault period (strictly forbidden by the Grid Code), as
shown in Fig. 16.
Therefore it is necessary to apply a control to modify the references, taking into account the different sea conditions and the
characteristics of the voltage dip that occurs in the grid, to get the
uninterrupted operation feature of the wave energy plant for any
external condition.
5. Neural control statement
In this section a neural control of the references needed to
achieve the uninterrupted operation feature of the wave energy
plant is presented. The controller inputs are the pressure drop and
network voltage, and the outputs are the references A, B, C, D and E.
The control block implemented changes the references A to E
according to the pressure drop and voltage reduction to improve
the controllability of the active and reactive power and the FRT
capability during the fault. In this sense, the A reference represents

Fig. 21. Training process performance for ANN2: 2165.

the per unit (pu) value of the gate signal used to switch on the
crowbar, the B reference represents the value of the air ow control
Ps reference signal related with its normal (fault-free) operation
value, given by the coefcient Ps =Psref , the C reference represents
the relative Ps =Psref value of the RSC reference active power signal Ps
compared with its normal operation value, the D reference is the
(pu) value of the RSC reference reactive power signal Qs and the E
reference is the (pu) value of the GSC reference reactive power
signal Qgr.
Also, different reference sets have been considered, each one
corresponding to a control response design philosophy. In this
sense, the reference set v0, generally applied to a fault-free working
environment or with voltage dips lower than 5%, aims to establish
a xed value of active power to be generated by regulating the ow
control (B 1) and the speed control through the RSC (C 1), while
not affecting the rest of references.
The reference set v1, as it may be observed in Fig. 17, does not
activate de crowbar (A 0), does not reduce the air ow (B 1),
reduces the active power Ps through the RSC (C < 1), generates
reactive power Qs through the RSC (D 1) during the fault recovery
period and reactive power Qgr through the GSC (E 0.3) during the
fault.
The reference set v2, as shown in Fig. 18, activates the crowbar
(A 1), does not reduce the air ow (B 1), reduces the active
power Ps (C < 1), generates reactive power Qs (D 1) during the
fault recovery period and generates reactive power Qgr (E 0.3)
during the voltage dip.
The reference set v3, as it may be observed in Fig. 19, is similar to
the reference set v2 but reduces the air ow (B < 1) during the fault.

Table 2
Turbine and induction generator parameters.

Fig. 20. Training process performance for ANN1: 2105.

Turbine

Generator

Prated 45 KW
n8
K 0.7079
r 0.7285
a 1.1763
b 0.4
l 0.38
D 1.714
Hub/tip ratio 2/1.2
J 50 Kgm2

Prated 37 KW
Vsrated 400 V
Frated 50 Hz
n of poles 4
Rs 0.0062 pu
Ls 0.0447 pu
Lm 2.5482 pu
Rr 0.0115 pu
Lr 0.0550 pu

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M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Fig. 22. Rotor A phase current (pu) for rough seas and controller references set v3.
Fig. 24. Active and reactive power for rough seas and controller references set v3.

Our purpose is to calculate the better reference set, to minimize

the variation of the turbo-generator speed, the stator and rotor
large peak currents and the oscillations of the DC-link voltage when
a grid fault occurs on the transmission system. To do so, numerous
simulations have been carried out in order to study the feature of
the turbo-generator group for different pressure drops, voltage dips
and the xed reference power. When analysing the simulations, it is
clear the existence of reference sets that optimize the performance
of the turbo-generator group, depending on sea conditions and
depth of the voltage dip. Data corresponding to the optimal reference sets have been grouped together, creating the reference sets
v0, v1, v2 and v3. An 80% of the data from the optimal reference sets
will be used for training the neural network, while the remaining
20% will be used for validation. The most signicant results may be
observed in Table 1 which shows the variation of the references
for different values of pressure drop and voltage dips. Using this
table, it is possible to derive the optimum uninterrupted operation
feature of the wave energy plant.
In this work, the computational tool used is the Neural Network
Toolbox, product embedded in MATLAB 7.9 [30]. Thus, various
architectures of ANNs, considering three and four layers were
tested. Also, different models were considered by varying the
numbers of neurons of the hidden layers, aiming equilibrium
between achieved accuracy and computational cost.

Fig. 23. Rotor A phase current (pu) for rough seas and controller references set v1.

In particular, different net congurations were tested in a trial

and error basis, with up to 20 neurons in the hidden layer. Each net
was trained using the back-propagation algorithm, which tries to
minimize the mean square error between the network output and
the corresponding target values.
The training was limited to 1000 epochs. Fig. 20 and Fig. 21
show the detailed of typical performance evolution curves corresponding to the training process of two representative net designs.
It may be seen that the value of this performance dened as the
mean square error between the network output and the corresponding target values, is 1.01062 e-014 in ANN1 (2  10  5) for
1000 epochs and 4.3487 e-007 in ANN2 (2  16  5) for 1000
epochs. It can be also observed that, although both ANNs
adequately match the desired relationship between references and
dp/voltage reduction, the accuracy of the networks highly depends
on the complexity of the chosen design. Besides, the precision of
the estimates also depend on the quality of the information used to
train the network.
In our particular case an ANN with one hidden layer consisting
of ten neurons has been chosen in a trial and error basis since it
presents an adequate performance to deal with the dynamics of the
turbine-generator module, and on the other hand, the use of more
complex ANN designs does not afford relevant improvements.

Fig. 25. Active and reactive power for rough seas and controller references set v1.

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

Fig. 26. VDC-link voltage (V) for rough seas and controller references set v3.

25

Fig. 28. Rotor speed (pu) for calm seas and controller references set v2.

In this section, the model of the Wells turbine and the OWC
module jointly with the VFC-controlled DFIG, the crowbar and the
air ow control presented in sections 2 and 3, respectively, have
been implemented following the scheme shown in Fig. 5. The
simulation tool used to perform the dynamic simulations is the
Simulink 7.4 included in the aforementioned MATLAB. The
turbineegenerator parameters used are shown in Table 2.
The nal objective of this work is to be applied to a real experimental plant called NEREIDA MOWC [31]. This demo project is
intended to demonstrate the successful incorporation of the OWC
technology with Wells turbine power take-off 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.
A rough sea scenario as shown in Fig. 12 has been initially
considered and the balanced grid fault has been implemented with
an 85% reduction of the grid voltage applied at 10 s and cleared at
15 s. Under these conditions and applying the controller references
set v3, that can be observed in Fig. 19, it may be observed in Fig. 22
the effect of the fault over the rotor phase current and in Fig. 24 the

active and reactive power generated at the stator terminals. For

comparison purposes, the same example has been performed for
the references set v1, detailed in Fig. 17. It can be observed that the
rotor phase current in Fig. 23 is signicantly lower than that in
Fig. 22.
Analogously, the active and reactive power generated by the
DFIG in Fig. 25 may be compared with the results shown in Fig. 24:
the active power consumption during the fault period is eliminated
and the reactive power overshoot during the start and clearance of
the fault are signicantly reduced. In the same way, it may be
observed in Fig. 26 the DC-link voltage for references set v3 and in
Fig. 27 for v1. The performance is improved, signicantly reducing
the voltage overshoots during the fault period and recovery.
Suppose now that the sea scenario changes to calm sea. Maintaining the reference of the generated power and controller references set v1 applied for rough seas, when a grid fault occurs with
the same 85% reduction of the grid voltage, the speed of the turbogenerator group decreases too much, causing it to stop and
disconnect from the network, as shown in Fig. 14. This behavior is
not allowed by the Grid Code and can be avoided changing the
controller references set v1 to v2, shown in Fig. 18. With this
change, it can be observed in Fig. 28 that the deceleration of the
rotor speed has been avoided by adequately regulating the air ow
valve, and in Fig. 29 that the active power consumption during the

Fig. 27. VDC-link voltage (V) for rough seas controller references set v1.

Fig. 29. Active power (W) for calm seas controller references set v2.

6. Simulation results

26

M. Alberdi et al. / Renewable Energy 48 (2012) 16e26

fault period observed in Fig. 16 eliminated, improving the

controllability of the active and reactive power.
7. Conclusions
The increasing penetration of renewable distributed power
generation systems within deregulated electricity markets has
caused new technical requirements where the most demanding
one is the Fault-Ride-Through capability during voltage drops in the
transmission system. In this sense, although at present day there is
not a specic standard on wave energy, the arising issues regarding
power grid faults are similar to other energies as wind energy, and
must also be solved by means of adequate fault tolerant control
schemes.
This paper has investigated the application of a neural controller
that dynamically changes the references of the air ow, the crowbar
and the variable frequency converter control scheme according to
the pressure drop and voltage dip, in order to improve the
controllability of the active and reactive power and the fault ridethrough capability during voltage drops.
The simulations indicate that the proposed neural controller
allows to achieve the uninterrupted operation of the wave energy
plant under balanced grid faults in the transmission system,
keeping the plant connected to the power network for different sea
scenarios and grid voltage dips.
In particular, the results obtained show that the plant fulls the
Spanish Grid Code regarding FRT capacities, avoiding or improving
the system response in terms of rotor over currents, active and
reactive power consumption, DC-link performance and uncontrolled rotor acceleration.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by University of the Basque
Country (UPV/EHU) through Research Project GIU11/02, by the
Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) through Research
Project ENE2010-18345 and by the EU FP7 EFDA under the task
WP09-DIA-02-01 WP III-2-c. The authors would also like to thank
the collaboration of the Basque Energy Board (EVE) through
Agreement UPV/EHU EVE23/6/2011
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