Thermal Rating of a Submerged Substation for Wave Power

The costs of offshore maintenance operations put high reliability-requirements on offshore equipment for ocean energy, especially on submerged ones. Thermal management is thus essential in the design of the prototypes of a marine substation, developed at Uppsala University, for grid interface of wave power parks. The cooling system itself should be efficient as well as reliable. Therefore, the feasibility of a completely passive cooling strategy was evaluated. The studied substation includes various power components, which dissipate heat and are installed in one pressurized vessel. Thermal cross-coupling was investigated with 3-D submodels and a thermal network model. An electric circuit was coupled to determine the rated power of the substation. The results depend mainly on the dc-voltage, the seawater temperature, and the thermal contact between the components and the hull.