Development of a digital excitation system for synchronous generator on RTAI-Linux platform

In this paper realization of a digital excitation system for synchronous generator is discussed. Such a real-time task is implemented using Real-Time Application Interface on Linux platform which is an open source effort. In this work a static excitation system is considered which involved the development of additional hardware circuits such as fully-controlled thyristor bridge-rectifier, the associated firing circuit module and data acquisition systems. In addition to normally discussed proportional controller, a proportional-integral controller is also realized to understand its generator voltage regulation performance under different operating conditions. Case studies are presented related to both standalone and parallel operation conditions of the generator without taking up complex controller-tuning procedures. Such a setup is found to augment the generally employed simulation-based power system dynamics analysis.