Wide area controllers for excitation boosters for transient stability improvement

Excitation boosters (EBs) are one of the most costeffective solutions to improve Fault Ride Through (FRT) capability of synchronous generators. However, they may lead to undesired behavior in multi-machine systems when governed by controllers that use local measurements. EB controllers based on a Wide Area Control System (WACS) have proved to be an effective solution to improve the overall transient stability of a multi-machine system. This paper compares two WACS-based EBs; one proposed in a previous work and a variant controller proposed here. In the comparison of WACS-based EBs, performance, design, implementation aspects and impact of communication latency are analyzed and discussed in detail.