Offshore Wind Farm with DC Collection System

Paper Information

Presented at PECI 2013

Entry on IEEE Xplore

Authors

• Michael Johnson - Graduate Student at Iowa State University

• Hao Chen - Industry at Mathworks

• Dionysios Aliprantis - Professor at Iowa State University

Abstract

This paper sets forth a novel dc-based topology for offshore wind power plants with permanent magnet synchronous generators, as an alternative to the common ac topology. A thorough reconsideration of the system’s design, namely, the individual wind turbine power electronics, the collection system topology, and the overall system control is performed. Initial findings suggest that the proposed dc topology leads to substantial energy efficiency improvements by reducing the system component count and the number of energy conversion stages. This in turn yields a leaner system with improved energy yields and reduced system weight/cost.