Search query: Lifetime wind converter

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abstract: Fostering of high altitude wind energy (HAWE) resources above 200 meters is a recent promising technology that seeks to capture the strong wind currents at high elevations. Among the many concepts of airborne wind energy (AWE) generators, the soft kite pumping cycle (PC) concept promises to provide a very lightweight, high power density, and cost effective solution. In this study, the impact of the load cycle on the lifetime of the machine side converter (MSC) is examined. By employing a physics of failure estimation approach, the main pumping cycles and the machine speed reversal were identified as the primary adverse influencers of the IGBT and diode solder joints. Whereas, wind speeds around 12 m/s contribute the most to the predicted degradation. To fulfill the thermal limitations and the lifetime requirements of the application, an optimum converter dimension is found using linear scaling of the semiconductors chip area and the heatsink thermal impedances. With the generation (reel out) phase power defined as the base value, the results suggest that the converter needs to be scaled by at least 150 to meet the thermal constraints, and by 350 to approach the target lifetime of ten years.
author_names: Bakr Bagaber

Patrick Junge

Axel Mertens
title: Lifetime Estimation and Dimensioning of the Machine Side Converter for Pumping Cycle Airborne Wind Energy System
venue: 2020 22nd European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications (EPE'20 ECCE Europe)
year: 2020

abstract: Offshore wind energy is currently the leading offshore renewable energy technology and plays an essential role in achieving a low carbon economy in Europe. Offshore wind turbines, as a result of the harsher offshore environment, suffer from high O&M costs, and as such a high overall LCOE. These higher O&M costs can be reduced by focusing on the most critical subassemblies of the OWT, by either improving the reliability of the subassembly or by better understanding the failure mechanism, and thus optimizing the O&M strategy. The power converter is identified as one of the most critical subassemblies as risk of the operation of the OWT in terms of maintainability and availability. The reliability of the power converter is heavily influenced by both its steady state and its dynamic thermal behavior, and as such great attention will be paid to the literature related to the thermal behaviour of the power converter. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview on how the typical mission profile of an OWT influences the thermal loading. The paper seeks to propose a comprehensive and up to date literature review related to the lifetime modelling of the power converter, and to highlight some of the main challenges yet to be tackled in the reliability analysis of the power converter, suggesting future areas of research.
author_names: Cameron Simpson

Agusti Egea Alvarez

Maurizio Collu
title: Influence of the Mission Profile on The Lifetime Modelling of the Wind Turbine Power Converter A Review
venue: 2020 9th International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Application (ICRERA)
year: 2020

abstract: One of the most important causes of failure in wind power systems is due to the failures of the power converter and due to one of its most critical components, the power semiconductor devices. This paper proposes a novel derating strategy for the wind turbine system based on the reliability performance of the converter and the total energy production throughout its entire lifetime. An advanced reliability design tool is first established and demonstrated, in which the wind power system together with the thermal cycling of the power semiconductor devices are modeled and characterized under a typical wind turbine system mission profile. Based on the reliability design tools, the expected lifetime of the converter for a given mission profile can be quantified under different output power levels, and an optimization algorithm can be applied to extract the starting point and the amount of converter power derating which is necessary in order to obtain the target lifetime requirement with a maximum energy production capability. A nonlinear optimization algorithm has been implemented and various case studies of lifetime requirements have been analyzed. Finally, an optimized derating strategy for the wind turbine system has been designed and its impact has been highlighted.
author_names: Ionut Vernica

Ke Ma

Frede Blaabjerg
title: Optimal Derating Strategy of Power Electronics Converter for Maximum Wind Energy Production with Lifetime Information of Power Devices
venue: IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics
year: 2018

abstract: A comparison has been made of the converter lifetime for a 3MW fully rated converter horizontal axis wind turbine located onshore and offshore. Simulated torque and speed of the turbine shaft were used to calculate voltage and current time series, that was used to calculate the junction temperatures of the diode and IGBT in the generatorside converter by a thermal electrical model. A rainssow counting algorithm was applied to the junction temperature in combination with an empirical model of the lifetime estimation, to calculate the lifetime of the power electronic modules in the turbine. The number of parallel modules for each location to achieve 20 years life time has also been found. Simulations show the lifetime consumption rate of the diode and IGBT is decreased exponentially by increasing number of parallel modules, lowering the average temperature. The offshore wind turbine has a higher lifetime consumption rate, requiring a slightly higher converter rating to achieve a 20 year lifetime, but this difference is small, and both turbines will use the same number of modules.
author_names: Kamyab Givaki

Max A Parker

Peter Jamieson
title: Givaki, K and Parker, M and Jamieson, P (2014) Estimation of the power electronic converter lifetime in fully rated converter wind turbine for onshore and offshore wind farms. In: 7th IET International Conference on Power Electronics, Machines and Drives
year: 2018

abstract: In wind farms (WF) the most popular and commonly implemented active power control method is the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) Due to the wake effect, the upstream wind turbine (WT) in WFs has more active power generation than the downstream WT at the wind directions and wind speeds that the WF has wake loss. In the case that WTs support the voltage control by reactive power, the upstream WT's power converter may have shorter lifetime even below the industrial standard. In this paper, based on the analysis of the wake effect, the reactive power capability of the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) WT, and the lifetime of the DFIG WT's power converter, a reactive power dispatch method is proposed in the WF with DFIG WTs to improve the lifetime of the upstream WT's power converter. The proposed reactive power dispatch method is analyzed and demonstrated by the simulation on a WF with 80 DFIG WTs. It can be concluded that, compared with the traditional reactive power dispatch method, the proposed method can increase the lifetime of the upstream WT's power converter.
author_names: Jie Tian

Dao Zhou

Chi Su

Zhe Chen

Frede Blaabjerg
title: Reactive Power Dispatch Method in Wind Farms to Improve the Lifetime of Power Converter Considering Wake Effect
venue: IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
year: 2017

abstract: As a key component in the wind turbine system, the power electronic converter and its power semiconductors suffer from complicated power loadings related to environment, and are proven to have high failure rates. Therefore, correct lifetime estimation of wind power converter is crucial for the reliability improvement and also for cost reduction of wind power technology. Unfortunately, the existing lifetime estimation methods for the power electronic converter are not yet suitable in the wind power application, because the comprehensive mission profiles are not well specified and included. Consequently, a relative more advanced approach is proposed in this paper, which is based on the loading and strength analysis of devices and takes into account different time constants of the thermal behaviors in power converter. With the established methods for loading and lifetime estimation for power devices, more detailed information of the lifetime related performance in wind power converter can be obtained. Some experimental results are also included to validate the thermal behavior of power device under different mission profiles.
author_names: Ke Ma

Marco Liserre

Frede Blaabjerg

Tamas Kerekes
title: Thermal Loading and Lifetime Estimation for Power Device Considering Mission Profiles in Wind Power Converter
venue: IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
year: 2015

abstract: Abstract Power semiconductors in the wind turbine power converter system suffer from two scale thermal loadings, the fundamental frequency thermal cycling caused by the output frequency of converter and the low frequency thermal cycling due to the variation of long term wind speed. These two scale thermal loadings introduce different consumed lifetimes. Accurate lifetime estimation in the wind power application is desired for reliability prediction and health management. This paper adopts the Bayerer lifetime model to evaluate the consumed lifetime of power semiconductors in wind power converter systems based on a numerical junction temperature calculation method. Lifetime estimation can be improved by taking into account the ambient temperature. Studies show that fluctuations of the ambient temperature increase the consumed lifetime due to the low frequency thermal cycling, but have little effect on the consumed lifetime due to the fundamental frequency thermal cycling. Our results also show that the consumed lifetime due to fundamental frequency thermal cycling mainly falls on the high wind speed area, whereas the consumed lifetime due to low frequency thermal cycling is clustered in the area due to large low frequency junction temperature fluctuations. The resulting distribution characteristics can be used in the thermal management for reliability improvement.
author_names: Xiong Du

Jun Zhang

Gaoxian Li

Heng-Ming Tai

Pengju Sun

Luowei Zhou
title: Lifetime estimation for IGBT modules in wind turbine power converter system considering ambient temperature
venue: Microelectron. Reliab.
year: 2016

abstract: The thermal dynamics of power semiconductors and power capacitors are closely related to the reliability and affect the cost of power electronic converter. However, the component loading in a wind turbine system is disturbed by many factors of the power converter, which presents various time constants from microseconds to hours. To determine the system availability in such system is a challenge and need detailed analysis. In the case of a mission profile with 1 hour sample rate, a simplified circuit model, loss model, and thermal model of the active power switches and passive capacitors are needed and described. According to the long term electrothermal profile, the percentile lifetime of a single component can be predicted. The Weibull function based time to failure distribution can then be used to link from component level to converter level reliability. From analysis of a 2 MW wind turbine system, it can be seen that the dc link capacitor bank dominates the converter level reliability.
author_names: Dao Zhou

Frede Blaabjerg
title: Converter Level Reliability of Wind Turbine With Low Sample Rate Mission Profile
venue: IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications
year: 2020

abstract: Back to back converters for wind turbine systems (WTS) feature capacitors in the DC link to maintain a stable DC link voltage and to decouple the generator from the grid. Electrolytic and film capacitors can be chosen to this purpose. Long term field experience and recorded failure data reveal that capacitor failures are one of the main reasons for the downtime of WTS. The ripple current accelerates the wear out of the capacitors, which is strongly dependent on the mission profile of the system. Therefore, it becomes important to estimate the useful lifetime of a capacitor as a function of the ripple current. In this paper, aging characteristics of electrolytic capacitors are described, and a power converter topology and its control strategy are designed to perform accelerated lifetime tests. The voltage and ripple current of the capacitor under test (CUT) can be controlled with low THD to correlate wear out with ripple.
author_names: Youngjong Ko

Holger Jedtberg

Giampaolo Buticchi

Marco Liserre
title: Topology and control strategy for accelerated lifetime test setup of DC link capacitor of wind turbine converter
venue: 2016 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC)
year: 2016

abstract: As a key component in the wind turbine system, the power electronic converter and its power semiconductors suffer from complicated power loadings related to environment, and are proven to have high failure rates. Therefore, correct lifetime estimation of wind power converter is crucial for the reliability improvement and also for cost reduction of wind power technology. Unfortunately, the existing lifetime estimation methods for the power electronic converter are not yet suitable in the wind power application, because the comprehensive mission profiles are not well specified and included. Consequently, a relative more advanced approach is proposed in this paper, which is based on the loading and strength analysis of devices and takes into account different time constants of the thermal behaviors in power converter. With the established methods for loading and lifetime estimation for power devices, more detailed information of the lifetime related performance in wind power converter can be obtained. Some experimental results are also included to validate the thermal behavior of power device under different mission profiles. (The original version of this paper has been presented at Energy Conversion Congress and Expo ECCE' 2013, Denver, Sep. 2013)
author_names: Ke Ma
title: Thermal " Loading " and " Lifetime " Estimation " for " Power " Device " Considering " Mission " Profiles " in " Wind " Power " Converter "
year: 2014