FUTURE OFFSHORE WIND FARM ELECTRICAL NETWORKS: A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK

Wind turbines and offshore wind farm electrical networks are expected to change dramatically over the next few years. This is driven by the rising power rating of wind turbines as well as the increasing distances from shore and water depths of the wind farm site. There is also a recognition from industry stakeholders of the need to change as current electrical network topologies will become increasingly inefficient and expensive. Wind farm developers and other stakeholders will be forced to consider more efficient and cost effective, but less mature, topologies. A UK/US collaboration (the DC Link Project) was commissioned by ARPA-E and Innovate UK to look into this challenge. This paper focuses on part of the project scope where a novel comparative framework was developed based on efficiency, security and reliability, controllability, and capital cost. To demonstrate the framework, it is applied to a comparison study of four electrical network topologies for a fictional wind farm.