Design and modeling of low-speed axial flux permanent magnet generator for wind based micro-generation systems

Pakistan is currently hit by severe energy crisis. In both its urban and rural areas, the shortfall of electricity is so intense that it can cause power shut-down for as long as ten hours a day. In order to cope with this situation, harnessing renewable energy resources is crucial. Therefore, in this work an efficient, low-speed gearless wind based micro-generation system is proposed. Such a system can exploit wind energy in urban and rural parts of the country and can convert it to electrical energy to meet daily domestic energy requirements. A 1.5 kW low speed direct driven axial flux permanent magnet (AFPM) generator is designed for this system using analytical techniques. The generator comprises of modular structure having non-ferromagnetic core and offers special features as light weight, low wind speed operation capability and low maintenance cost. Such features make it superior to the available types of energy systems such as those utilizing Induction Generators (IG) and Synchronous Generators (SG). The design is implemented using dynamic modeling in MATLAB (Simulink) and validated through performance comparison with available state-of-the-art wind energy system models.