Self-Starting Excitation System with Low-Power Permanent Magnet Generator

This paper presents a high-efficiency low-power permanent magnet (PM) generator for the power supply of the generator exciter. In the conventional generator system, the power for the exciter is fed by the generator output power or an emergency battery for the starting. The proposed low-power PM generator can generate the proper power and voltage to excite the exciter field winding. According to the starting of the generator, the designed PM generator can supply the constant voltage to the Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR), then it can be used to control of exciter field current for the generator. Because of the designed PM generator which is placed inside the conventional generator system, the emergency battery and Potential Transducer(PT) for AVR can be removed. Thus, the total efficiency can be improved. The proposed generator system is tested in the practical system. And the efficiency characteristic is analyzed.