Electronic – Why is there a different load current in two identical DC generators in parallel operation

generator

I am a university student. While we were performing the experiment of parallel operation of two DC generators, we noticed that the load shared by the two generators was different. The total load current was about 21 A. The first generator was delivering 20 A and the other was delivering 1 A. Despite fulfilling all the necessary conditions of parallel operation, why is the load current so different? I think that it should be equal in both generators.

Best Answer

In the real world getting parallel voltage sources to share the load is not easy.

The problem is that no two generators are exactly the same. If one outputs just slightly more voltage than the other or has slightly lower internal resistance it will take most of the load.

For example if we have two generators that are supposed to be producing 100V but one of them actually makes 101V it will take most of the load. The example below assumes that each of the generators has 1 ohm internal resistance.

(The numbers have been rounded so they don't add up exactly)

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

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