Power Losses in Electrical Topologies for a Multi-Rotor Wind Turbine System

Abstract

Multi-rotor wind turbine systems are proposed as an additional technology to the future of wind energy, and a way of achieving wind turbines generating 20 MW or more. Research regarding the electrical connections of such a system is lacking, and this is key parts of the system. The controllability and power losses are important factors in the different topology options. In this study, three different electrical topologies are proposed and their controllers are implemented respectively. The systems are fairly simplified. Further, ways to measure the power losses within the power converters are researched, and a way of doing so is implemented on the three systems. The simulations performed on the system show the validity of the controllers as well as the power loss calculation method. In this study, the power losses found in the different topologies in total are quite similar to each other, right above 1%, so it is hard to prefer on of the topologies based on this. However, this serves as a tool that can be adjusted and used on more complex systems, and in this way contribute to finding an optimal electrical collector topology for a multi-rotor wind turbine system.