Segmentation Effects in the Modular HVDC Offshore Wind Generator and its
Impact on Losses
Abstract
Worldwide wind power capacity jumped from 7.5GW in 1997 to 564GW by
2018, according to IRENA. Many regions of the world have strong wind
speeds, but the best locations for generating wind power are often
remote, where offshore wind power offers tremendous potential. This
paper presents a concept to remove the use of offshore
platforms/substations, constituting the energy conditioning element for
high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission. Instead, it connects
converters in a series of modules for a segmented HVDC generator, which
limits the number of conversion steps. Our work focuses on the impact of
segmentation on loss and is validated numerically using finite element
analysis (FEA) and analytical solutions. The machine’s geometry, design
constraints, design procedure, loss calculations, and numerical analysis
are included. Three different methods are presented and used to
determine the core losses. The paper highlights the increase in core
losses due to airgap segmentation. We show that Zhang’s method yield the
largest deviation in the loss calculations, i.e., 15.812%, 16.410% and
15.894% increase in core losses for 10, 20 and 30 mm segment airgaps,
respectively.