Offshore wind converter reliability evaluation

Offshore wind turbine is facing the challenges of harsh environment and low accessibility etc. To make offshore wind business success for long-term operation, high reliability is very important to make the system get the same availability as its onshore counterparts. According to existing statistics, about 40% system faults are related to wind converters. Some of the faults are caused by improper design, and others come from worst-case operation and improper control. All these related to the converter reliability issue. To get full understanding of wind converter reliability issue, this paper introduces a systematic method that includes the converter failure model evaluation and analysis (FMEA), reliability modeling & calculation, availability calculation, reliability test design and worst-case shock simulation/evaluation. Based on these methods, a typical wind converter system is analyzed. According results and improvement instructions are presented.