Abstract
This paper reports a distributed thermal monitoring scheme for power electronic modules (PEMs) in wind turbine converters. The sensing system is based on utilizing electrically non-conductive and electromagnetic interference immune fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensing technology embedded in the PEM baseplate. The design and implementation features of the proposed scheme are presented first. The scheme is then applied in a commercial PEM operating within an inverter bridge, equipped also with a conventional distributed thermal monitoring system using a multiple point thermo-couple (TC) sensor suite. A range of tests are performed to evaluate the performance of the FBG distributed thermal monitoring system and correlate it to TC measurements under steady-state and transient operating conditions representative of PEM operation in an actual wind turbine application. It is shown that the proposed FBG monitoring system can offer practical operational improvements in establishment of distributed thermal sensing schemes for wind turbine PEM.
Highlights
P OWER electronic modules such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are a crucial power conversion and control component, widely used in consumer electronic devices and industry, including traction applications, renewable generators and grid control devices [1]
This study aims to explore the potential of fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) array sensor application to improve current practices for distributed thermal monitoring in the power electronic modules (PEMs) external structure
This section reports the results of the experimental study undertaken to evaluate the application of the proposed thermal monitoring scheme for power module thermal condition monitoring
Summary
P OWER electronic modules such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are a crucial power conversion and control component, widely used in consumer electronic devices and industry, including traction applications, renewable generators and grid control devices [1]. Wind turbines in particular work in complex operating, and extreme environmental, conditions, where due to a wide range of wind speed variation the turbine generator side power converter is typically utilized in a broad frequency band [2]. Date of publication May 6, 2020; date of current version August 5, 2020. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was Dr Daniele Tosi.
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