Feasibility Study of a 10 MW MgB2 Fully Superconducting Generator for Offshore Wind Turbines

Feasibility Study of a 10 MW MgB2 Fully Superconducting Generator for Offshore Wind Turbines

Kostopoulos, D.
Liu, D.
Genani, G.
Polinder, H.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Electrical Sustainable Energy

2013-11-19

Offshore wind is considered a vital component of the future large scale renewable generation portfolio. Intense R&D effort is occurring in both the technology and the supply chain aiming at cost reduction. The drivetrain of wind turbines is an area of continuous evolution with currently no one standard configuration in the industry. It is anticipated that in order to upscale offshore wind turbines in the 10+ MW power range innovation is necessary in this subsystem. A possible solution could be the adoption of superconductivity technology. The potential benefits are multiple comprising weight, dimension and cost reduction in both capital and operating costs. In this paper a rough analytical design is presented of an MgB2 fully superconducting wind turbine generator (WTG). An analytical current sheet distribution is adopted to calculate the magnetic field of the generator and a finite element method (FEM) analysis is used to verify the field calculation. The objective of this work is to assess the technical feasibility of this generator topology and attempt to extract more general conclusions regarding the potential application of superconducting drivetrains in offshore wind turbines.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:42184015-8cac-4be2-8084-a221744d0452

European Wind Energy Association

EWEA Offshore 2013, Frankfurt, Germany, 19-21 November 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Author(s)