most common. Two-stroke diesel engines are oftenderivatives of marine designs with relatively large outputs(circa 30MW is possible) and may have running speeds of the order of 125rpm. This requires a generator with alarge number of poles (48 for a 125rpm, 50Hz generator)and consequently is of large diameter and short axiallength. This is a contrast to turbine-driven machines thatare of small diameter and long axial length.
Network Protection & Automation Guide
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E q u i v a l e n t C i r c u i t s a n d P a r a m e t e r s o f P o w e r S y s t e m P l a n t
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around its periphery. This construction is unsuited tomulti-polar machines but it is very sound mechanically.Hence it is particularly well adapted for the highestspeed electrical machines and is universally employed for2 pole units, plus some 4 pole units.The salient pole type has poles that are physicallyseparate, each carrying a concentrated excitationwinding. This type of construction is in many wayscomplementary to that of the cylindrical rotor and isemployed in machines having 4 poles or more. Except inspecial cases its use is exclusive in machines having morethan 6 poles. Figure 5.1 illustrates a typical largecylindrical rotor generator installed in a power plant.Two and four pole generators are most often used inapplications where steam or gas turbines are used as thedriver. This is because the steam turbine tends to besuited to high rotational speeds. Four pole steam turbinegenerators are most often found in nuclear powerstations as the relative wetness of the steam makes thehigh rotational speed of a two-pole design unsuitable.Most generators with gas turbine drivers are four polemachines to obtain enhanced mechanical strength in therotor- since a gearbox is often used to couple the powerturbine to the generator, the choice of synchronousspeed of the generator is not subject to the sameconstraints as with steam turbines.Generators with diesel engine drivers are invariably of four or more pole design, to match the running speed of the driver without using a gearbox. Four-stroke dieselengines usually have a higher running speed than two-stroke engines, so generators having four or six poles are
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Direction of rotation(a)(b)
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Figure 5.2: Distortion of flux due to armature reactionFigure 5.1: Modern large synchronous generator
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