Feasibility analysis of auxiliary winding for condition monitoring of wound field brushless synchronous generators

This paper analyzes the feasibility of using the existing auxiliary winding in wound field brushless synchronous generator for condition monitoring. The auxiliary winding is the 4th winding placed in the stator of a three phase synchronous generator to feed exciter field through the automatic voltage regulator. This paper presents the model of a wound field synchronous generator with stator winding fault and auxiliary winding to perform simulation study for identifying the fault signatures in auxiliary winding voltage. The identified fault signatures are validated with the experimental setup. The analysis shows that the auxiliary winding voltage harmonics can be used to detect and diagnose stator winding turn-to-turn short circuit fault. Hence, it is feasible to use auxiliary winding voltage for condition monitoring of wound field brushless synchronous generators.