Thermal Cycling in Converter IGBT Modules with Different Cooling Systems in Pitch- and Active Stall-Controlled Tidal Turbines

This paper compares active and passive cooling systems in tidal turbine power electronic converters. The comparison is based on the lifetime of the IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) power modules, calculated from the accumulated fatigue due to thermal cycling. The lifetime analysis accounts for the influence of site conditions, namely...

A Review of Methods to Increase the Availability of Wind Turbine Generator Systems

Availability is an important factor to be considered when designing wind turbine generator systems. The quest for increasing availability is based on the following five design approaches - design for component reliability, active control for reliability, design for fault tolerance, prognostics, and design for maintainability. This paper reviews...