Digital-Twin Based Health Monitoring for Multi-Phase Boost Rectifier in Wind Offshore Applications

In the field of energy generation from renewables, such as wind power, it is essential to avoid service interruption, as well as to ensure scheduled maintenance. For this reason, it is necessary to monitor critical components, such as the power electronic converters (PECs). This paper proposes an online real-time monitoring method based on Digital Twin (DT) concept applied to PECs generally used for energy conversion in wind offshore systems, focusing on the parameters estimation of an AC-DC 6-phase converter. The DT is realized as a real-time digital model (RTDM) that runs in parallel to the physical 6-phase boost rectifier for its entire lifecycle. The Typhoon solver is used to implement the RTDM of the 6-phase boost rectifier to reach a solving time within 1μs. By applying the heuristic optimization algorithm like the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method, the actual value of the monitored on-state resistances of the switches, the stator impedance of the permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM), and the DC-link capacitance can be found. The proposed monitoring method is validated through the RTDM implemented on Typhoon HIL 606, which is equipped with a control board that runs the same physical asset control algorithm. Experimental tests are illustrated.