Energy Evaluation for DC/DC Converters in DC-Based Wind Farms

Licentiate thesis, 2007

In this thesis the suitability of three topologies for DC/DC converters in a DC wind farm grid is investigated from an energy efficiency and energy production cost point of view. The three selected topologies are the fullbridge converter, the single active bridge converter and the series parallel resonant converter. The losses are calculated for all three topologies as a function of the wind speed considering the losses in the semiconductor components and in the transformer. To obtain the average losses, the losses for each converter are integrated over the wind distribution for different average wind speeds. It is found that the resonant converter has the lowest losses of the three types for the DC wind farm application with power losses of about 2.0 - 2.5 % of the input power and the fullbridge converter has slightly higher losses with 2.3 - 3.5 % losses depending on the position in the wind turbine grid. The single active bridge converter has considerably higher losses than the other two topologies with 3.5 - 5.0 % losses. It is shown that the variable operating conditions create problems for all three converters, and as mentioned the single active bridge converter is most affected by the wide range of operation conditions. When comparing the resonant converter and the fullbridge converter, the fullbridge converter has a smaller transformer as well as lower peak current and peak voltage, but also a higher number of diode modules in the output bridge. Comparing the contribution to the energy production cost for the converters, the topology with the lowest contribution varies between the positions in the wind turbine grid. For some positions, the cost of the higher losses for the fullbridge converter are compensated by lower investment cost for the fullbridge converter compared to the resonant converter. Considering the resonant capacitor, the higher peak voltage and the variable frequency control for the resonant converter, the fullbridge converter is here found to be the most suitable choice for the wind farm application. A measurement verification is conducted for the fullbridge converter, and the result found is that the simulated waveforms and the calculated losses agree with the measured values.