Recent research advances in wind turbine thermal management technologies

Abstract

The global environment is deteriorating and the energy demand is increasing rapidly, leading to a growing interest in the development and utilization of new energy sources. Among them, wind energy stands out as a widely distributed and non-polluting renewable option, making wind power generation technology a key focus of scientific research. As the research on wind power generation continues to advance, wind turbines worldwide are evolving towards higher power and larger capacity. However, the progress in the research on cooling methods for wind power generation systems has been slow, resulting in the current cooling technology being unable to completely solve the heat buildup problem of wind turbines. To ensure efficient heat dissipation of high-power and large-capacity wind turbines, there is a need for a stable and effective thermal management system. This study reviews the state of research on cooling technologies for wind power systems and provides an overview of the thermal behavior and temperature field distribution of current wind power system components. In addition, the potential use of the thermal management technology based on phase change materials in wind power thermal management system in the future is also discussed.