A remote and sensorless stator winding thermal protection scheme for line-connected AC machines

An advanced remote and sensorless thermal protection technique for line-connected AC machines is proposed in this paper. The proposed technique includes an algorithm for detecting abnormal cooling conditions due to reduced motor cooling ability in addition to a stator resistance (R/sub s/)-based stator temperature (T/sub s/) estimation scheme. The motor cooling ability monitoring algorithm can be implemented using the R/sub s/ estimates of an existing DC injection-based R/sub s/ estimation scheme without additional hardware or parameter information. In addition, the influence of the fuse, circuit breaker, and cable resistances on the R/sub s/ estimate is investigated, and methods for compensation are suggested for improving the accuracy of the R/sub s/ estimate, and therefore, the reliability of T/sub s/ monitoring. Experimental results under various abnormal cooling conditions verify that the reduced cooling ability of the motor can be reliably detected and that it can be used in addition to the T/sub s/ estimate for complete motor thermal protection.