A Direct Drive Wind Turbine HTS Generator

The wind turbine market is growing rapidly, and there has also been a trend toward ever increasing turbine rating. Most turbines to date has used geared high speed generators, but a history of gearbox reliability problems have turned many turbine manufacturers towards direct drive generators, which are very low speed, high torque, and therefore very large. Superconducting machines offer the possibility of much more compact machines, but the high cost of HTS wire to date has prevented their application to a cost sensitive market such as wind energy. A new generation of low cost HTS wire is being developed which will allow HTS machines to compete in such a market. Consequently, converteam are undertaking a project to design a full size direct drive HTS generator, including the manufacture and test of a scaled model generator. The 1st stage conceptual design phase, including economic assessment, has completed which has identified solutions to the anticipated challenges and risk.