AYR TUNING FOR BETTER ON-LINE GENERATOR PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Tradition dictates that automatic voltage regulators be tuned with the synchronous generator open-circuited. In this thesis it is shown that considerable improvement in the dynamic voltage response of a loaded generator can be achieved by tuning the AVR for on-line conditions. This is done using a reduced order model of the loaded generator arrived at by calculating the generator frequency response using a transient stability program. In a specific application it is shown that considerable improvement in the dynamic voltage response of Calgary,Power's Sundance #3 plant can be achieved with no hardware modifications. Further improvement is possible with the addition of cascade complex compensators. The effects of load variations are investigated and in all cases it is shown that the generator remains stable when open-circuited. Because the SD 3 static AVR has a special feature of internal current feedback, a system with a more standard static AVR is also retuned for on-line conditions. An important result of the study was that in all cases where terminal voltage response was improved, additional damping was also provided to electric power transients.