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With the increasing integration of renewable energy generation into high-power grids, transmission at the dc level is becoming increasingly more useful than ac transmission. In this regard, emerging applications, such as offshore wind farms, require a high voltage gain dc/dc conversion system to interface with high-power transmission networks. This paper presents a new high-voltage gain resonant switched-capacitor dc/dc converter for high-power offshore wind energy systems. The proposed dc/dc converter is characterized by the resonant switching transitions to achieve minimal switching losses and maximum system efficiency. Therefore, a higher switching frequency is conceivable to attain a higher power density. The double stage output voltage of the proposed converter operates at seven times as high as the input voltage with a small device count. The output capacitors are charged and discharged continuously by a 180° phase shift with respect to each other to eliminate the output voltage ripples with the low capacitance requirements. The proposed series-modular and cascade configurations show the intrinsic advantage of being readily applicable to multistage power switching converters. The developed topology has been implemented on a 5-kW prototype converter to test its feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offshore wind farms are rapidly growing owing to their comparatively more stable wind conditions than onshore and land-based wind farms. The power capacity of offshore wind turbines has been increased to 5MW in order to capture a larger amount of wind energy, which results in an increase of each component's size. Furthermore, the weight of the marine turbine components installed in the nacelle directly influences the total mechanical design, as well as the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs. A reduction in the weight of the nacelle allows for cost-effective tower and foundation structures. On the other hand, longer transmission distances from an offshore wind turbine to the load leads to higher energy losses. In this regard, DC transmission is more useful than AC transmission in terms of efficiency because no reactive power is generated/consumed by DC transmission cables. This paper describes some of the challenges and difficulties faced in designing high-power-density power conversion systems (HPDPCSs) for offshore wind turbines. A new approach for high gain/high voltage systems is introduced using transformerless power conversion technologies. Finally, the proposed converter is evaluated in terms of step-up conversion ratio, device number, modulation, and costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]