Impact of wind conditions on thermal loading of PMSG wind turbine power converters

Abstract

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: Power converter reliability is critical for permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) wind turbines. Converter failures are linked to power module thermal loading but studies often neglect turbine dynamics, control and the impact of wind speed sampling rate on lifetime estimation. This paper addresses this using a 2MW direct-drive PMSG wind turbine model with a 2-level converter, and simulating junction temperatures (T j ) using a power module thermal equivalent circuit under various synthetic wind speed conditions. These synthetic wind conditions include constant and square wave profiles representing stable and gusty wind conditions. Responses to square wave wind speeds showed that the lower the gust frequency, the higher ∆T j becomes, demonstrating that low turbulence sites have greater thermal variation in the converter. In contrast, wind speed variations with frequencies greater than 0.25Hz deliver only small increases in ∆T j . It is concluded that reasonable approximations of T j profiles can be made with 0.25Hz wind speed data, but that lower data rate wind measurements miss essential, damaging characteristics.

A PI‐Type Sliding Mode Controller Design for PMSG‐Based Wind Turbine

“…The simulation test platform is based on the MATLAB/Simulink environment and the packaged modules in SimPowerSysterms are used in this simulation test platform, including the wind turbine, PMSG, and VSCs. Meanwhile, the two mass block spring damping model mentioned in [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] is adopted to describe the dynamics of flexible drive chain. Therefore, the simulation test platform is relatively close to the actual physical system, due to the adoption of many packaged modules.…”

Power converter junction temperature measurement using infra‐red sensors

“…In [4], two parallel SEMIKRON SKSB2100GD69/11‐MAPB stacks were used containing SKiiP2013GB172‐4DWV3 half‐bridge SKiiP modules. Ideally, these modules would be the DUT but this was impractical due to the cost and experimental impracticality of current and voltage ratings (1000 A nom and 1700 V ces ).…”

“…To replicate the fixed wind speeds in [4], the operating conditions have to be scaled to match the experimental constraints. The constant 12.7 m/s wind speed conditions simulated in [4] could not be replicated as the DC source did not have the current or voltage capacity required (5 A instead of 6 A, and 300 V instead of 406 V).…”

“…Power module failure is the failure mode for nearly all major converter repairs [2]. Traditionally, power module failure has been linked to power module thermal loading, where the variation of temperature in the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) and diode cases causes fatigue through expansion and contraction between package layers [4]. The reference temperature is the virtual junction temperature ( T j ), which is a virtual representation of the chip p‐n junction temperature [4].…”

“…Previous research by the authors has provided drive train modelling and thermal loading simulation [4]. This paper outlines the wind turbine power converter physical emulation and surrounding drive train to answer the following research questions (RQ): (i) How should the device temperature be monitored to provide high‐frequency, high‐accuracy T j measurements without affecting the control or operation of the device under test?…”