Limited ride-through capabilities for direct frequency converters

Many solutions to provide continuous operation of adjustable speed drives (ASDs) during power grid disturbances have been proposed, but they are all applied to DC-link ASD. In this paper a new solution to provide limited ride-through operation of a scalar controlled direct frequency converter (DFC) for a duration of hundreds of milliseconds, without any hardware modification, is presented. During the ride-through operation, the drive is not capable of developing torque or to control the motor flux. By recovering the necessary power to feed the control hardware, the DFC is able to keep the ASD operating. When normal grid conditions are re-established, the DFC is also able to accelerate the motor from nonzero speed and flux by initializing the modulator with the estimated frequency and initial voltage vector angle. The duration of the ride-through operation depends on the initial motor flux, speed level, rotor time constant, load torque and inertia.