A Simple Procedure to Evaluate the Efficiency and Power Density of Power Conversion Topologies for Offshore Wind Turbines

The prospective development of the offshore wind energy conversion system is mainly promoted by demand for higher efficiency and power density. This paper describes a simple procedure to calculate the efficiency and power density of power conversion systems for offshore wind turbines. The proposed method can be used as starting point into the linear design process to calculate the losses in semiconductors and transformer as well as the volume of main elements. With the losses and volumes, efficiency and power density can be calculated. In order to illustrate the evaluation procedure, the reduced matrix converter with single-phase transformer is considered like example topology. The Efficiency-Power-density Pareto Front is obtained for a set of design parameters. The methodology is eminently suitable for comparison of power converter with different topologies.