Medium-Voltage Modular Power Converter for Wave Energy Conversion Systems

Darwish, Ahmed and Ma, Xiandong and Aggidis, George (2023) Medium-Voltage Modular Power Converter for Wave Energy Conversion Systems. In: The 33rd International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference, Ottawa, Canada, June 2023 : ISOPE 2023. ISOPE, pp. 636-643. ISBN 9781880653807

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Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the performance of a new cascaded modular power electronic converter for Wave Energy Conversion (WEC) systems. The proposed electrical power converter employs submodule units to replace the central conventional power converter aiming to bring additional benefits of scalability, lower voltage and current stresses, better efficiency, and better fault-ride-through. Because the voltages across the semiconductor switches are lower, fast devices such as Silicon Carbide (SiC) or Gallium Nitride (GaN) can be used to improve the efficiency. The proposed converter still operates at low voltage (LV) at the generator side while the outputs are connected in series to match the medium voltage (MV) grid. The paper discusses the control schemes for the power converter and presents the operational results using MATLAB/SIMULINK software.