Medium Voltage Sensorless Induction Motor Drive for Subsea Applications

In this paper, a MV induction motor drive for submarine oil pump applications is considered. The motor is usually connected to the inverter drive with a cable of tens of kilometres and sensorless control is a must since sensors can be replaced only with the use of submarine robots. For these reasons, instability phenomena can occur. To overcome these issues, a new control is proposed in this study, involving a compensated sensorless FOC algorithm based on the Luenberger observer. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is tested with simulations considering the MV drive parameters. Moreover, experimental tests are carried out on a small scale LV prototype.