Real-time power angle determination of salient-pole synchronous machine based on air gap measurements

This paper presents a new method for the real-time power angle determination of the salient-pole synchronous machines. This method is based on the terminal voltage and air gap measurements, which are the common features of the hydroturbine generator monitoring system. The raw signal of the air gap sensor is used to detect the rotor displacement with reference to the fundamental component of the terminal voltage. First, the algorithm developed for the real-time power angle determination is tested using the synthetic data obtained by the standard machine model simulation. Thereafter, the experimental investigation is carried out on the 26 MVA utility generator. The validity of the method is verified by comparing with another method, which is based on a tooth gear mounted on the rotor shaft. The proposed real-time algorithm has an adequate accuracy and needs a very short processing time. For applications that do not require real-time processing, such as the estimation of the synchronous machine parameters, the accuracy is additionally increased by applying an off-line data-processing algorithm.