Enhanced Volts-per-Hertz Sensorless Starting of Permanent Magnet Motor with Heavy Loads in Long-Cable Subsea Applications

Abstract

Permanent magnet (PM) motors are gaining prominence in subsea applications such as drilling, pumping, and boosting for oil and natural gas extraction. These motors are gradually replacing traditional induction motors. However, starting and operating PM motors at low speeds under heavy loads poses significant challenges. This is because of unknown initial rotor positions and resistive voltage drops due to the presence of a sinewave filter, transformer, and long cable. An unknown rotor position may result in temporary reverse speed, which may cause a loss of synchronism; therefore, initial rotor position estimation is preferable. Additionally, addressing the voltage drop issue requires careful voltage compensation to avoid transformer core saturation. In this paper, an enhanced V/Hz starting of a PM motor is proposed with initial position detection (IPD) and voltage compensation to start the motor reliably with a heavy load. The proposed control method is verified with controller hardware in the loop (C-HIL) real-time simulation using a Typhoon HIL-604 emulator and a Texas Instruments TMS320F28335 digital signal processor (DSP) control card.