Abstract
Modularity is promising from a view to increasing turbine availability through fault tolerant operation as well as reduced downtimes, especially for offshore wind turbines. This paper focuses on a quantitative analysis of large scale (or extreme) modularity in power electronic converters of wind turbine generator systems. It uses mathematical models to investigate the effect of the choice of module number on the availability of a converter. It further analyses the availability in conditions where increased levels of modularity lead to a reduction of failure rates in the system. The paper extends this analysis by quantifying the benefits for a 10MW case study turbine. Finally, it concludes that extreme modularity holds merit only when it is accompanied by a reduction in failure rates.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 8309301 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1772-1782 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Keywords
- Availability
- Markov Modeling
- Modularity
- Power Electronic Converter
- Wind Turbine
