A Comprehensive Overview of Power Converter Applied in High-Power Wind Turbine: Key Challenges and Potential Solutions

The increasing penetration of offshore wind power generation promotes the revolution of wind turbine toward high-power application. The development of high-power wind turbine undoubtedly poses new technical challenges. This article presents a comprehensive overview for high-power wind energy conversion system (WECS) from key technique aspects, including topologies, stability, reliability, and ancillary service capability, and further investigates the key challenges and potential solutions. The various topologies of power converter applied in high-power wind turbine are first reviewed and discussed. The different semiconductor technology, including recent wide bandgap devices, and their potential contributions for offshore high-power converters are discussed. Furthermore, the potential stability issues of high-power WECS are investigated and reviewed. Also, the stabilization control strategies are discussed. Further, the reliability issue and enhancement strategies of high-power WECS are discussed, including condition monitoring, active thermal control strategy, and fault-tolerant operation method. In addition, the ancillary service capability of high-power WECS, including frequency-active power control capability and voltage-reactive power control capability, is reviewed. Finally, the future trends and potential solutions are discussed in this article.