A redundant electrical braking system for wind turbine generators

Mechanical brake is typically used in wind turbine, which typically suffers from frequent wear-out, more trip opportunities and high maintenance cost. To addressing this issue, a redundant electrical braking system is proposed in this paper. It comprises a conventional dynamic brake connected to the converter DC link and a fully controllable resistive load connected to the generator terminals. The resistive load can be engaged by an active power semiconductor and a NC(normally closed) contactor.