Thesis
Cost-effective energy transfer for offshore wind
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2025
- Thesis identifier
- T17255
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202083317
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Offshore wind and green hydrogen have the potential to help address the energy trilemmaof sustainability, security, and affordability. However, their high cost remains one of themain barriers to their rapid development. Using DC collection systems in offshorewind farms has the potential to make the transfer of electrical energy to shore morecost-effective by reducing the size of offshore platforms or by removing them entirely.Similarly, co-locating electrolysers and wind turbines without a grid connection canmake the transfer of chemical energy more cost-effective by removing the need for theoffshore platform, export cables, and collector cables.The first part of this thesis identifies the most promising DC wind farm configurationsand carries out a cost-benefit analysis. The results show that all-DC wind farms canlower the levelised cost of electricity, depending on factors such as the DC/DC convertercosts, platform costs, and collector voltage. A multi-objective optimisation is thencarried out for four promising DC/DC converter topologies, and their performance iscompared in terms of reliability, volume, weight, and losses. The optimal operatingfrequency for each of the selected topologies is also determined. The results show thatthe single-phase single active bridge operating at 2.5 kHz or the three-phase dual activebridge operating at 1 kHz are optimal.The second part of the thesis investigates the technical challenges associated with a standalone wind turbine and electrolyser system. A complete control system is developed toallow off-grid operation, and three strategies are proposed to balance the power betweenthe wind turbine and electrolyser. The levelised cost of hydrogen is then investigatedfor each power balancing strategy, as well as for three alternative DC-based drivetrainsto improve the system efficiency. The results show that using supercapacitor energystorage and the standard AC-based drivetrain is the most realistic and cost-effectiveoption.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Egea Álvarez, Agustí
- Gkountaras, Aris
- Resource Type
- DOI
- Date Created
- 2024
- Funder
Relations
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PDF of thesis T17255 | 2025-05-01 | Public | Download |