Inverter open-circuit fault diagnosis method in PMSG based wind energy conversion system

Fault tolerance in wind energy conversion systems is considered indispensable to increase their reliability and availability levels. Consequently, this paper develops an easy method for fault detection and identificacion (FDI) for grid coupled power converter with loss of single switch or loss of two switches. The proposed FDI method is based on the absolute average value of the normalized converter phase currents, which allows the diagnosis of simple and multiple faults. The studied method doesn't require any additional sensors. It needs only the measurement of three phase currents already used by the closed-loop control. In order to verify the validity of the proposed FDI method, we carried out a several simulations and experimental results.