Design of a Medium Voltage Generator and Power Converter for High Power Wind Energy Conversion Systems

In this paper a new topology of a gearless, segmented synchronous generator and power converter system is presented to address medium output voltage in wind power applications. To fulfill the boundary condition, the generator has a high pole count and a stator divided into several 3-phase segments with their own rectifier. With the resulting DC-cascade (series connection of the rectifiers) it is possible to achieve a medium output voltage with low voltage converters and without a bulky transformer. This new topology of the DC-cascade reduces the effort to achieve medium DC voltage in wind turbines and simplifies the converter system.