ETAP Knowledge Base

The Effect of Generator’s Shaft Mechanical Damping

Description: Why generator’s shaft mechanical damping %MW/Hz has no effect on a TS
study?
Category: Generator’s Editor, Damping
Type: Transient Stability
Keywords: Mechanical oscilation, Damping,

Answer

Generator’s electrical and/or mechanical oscillations happen mostly when large impact is
enforced to the system and generator has too aggressive controllers. Presence of those
oscillations are a must if the effct of damping factor wants to be studied. Considering that group
of controllers (i.e. Governor, AVR and PSS) with many parameters independently but
interactively control a generator, observation of damping requires satisfaction of at least
following extreme criterias.

 Impact should be large enough to cause enough disturbance on the system and
consequently generator. A fault for a short period of time is the most suggested study.

 An aggressive controller and specially governor may cause oscillatory response of

generator. It can easily be observed by adjusting droop gain of governor.

 Damping factor should also be large enough to prevent generator from shuting down. In
such a case if oscillations would be too large, generator may shut down before damping
effect would be observable.

 Generators with high enertia are more stable and less prone to this type of oscillations.
Oscillation phenomena is more observable for generatos with lower inertia.

If all of the above mentioned factors would be considered, the damping effect would be evident
in suppressing those oscillations.

This document is confidential and proprietary to Operation Technology, Inc. and may not be reproduced, published or disclosed to
others without the written authorization of Operation Technology, Inc., 17 Goodyear, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92618, USA. © 2011 by
Operation Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

© Operation Technology, Inc. Page 1 of 2 ETAPKB

ETAP Knowledge Base

The Effect of Generator’s Shaft Mechanical Damping

Example: For a simple islanded system with one generator and load a fault for the duration of
100msec is studied on the generator’s terminal bus.

Compasiron results for damping of 0% on Gen1 versus identical system but with damping of
20% on Gen3 is shown below.

This document is confidential and proprietary to Operation Technology, Inc. and may not be reproduced, published or disclosed to
others without the written authorization of Operation Technology, Inc., 17 Goodyear, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92618, USA. © 2011 by
Operation Technology, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

© Operation Technology, Inc. Page 2 of 2 ETAPKB