Project: Compact High Efficiency Generator
As the market for large offshore wind turbines increases, the requirement to reduce the cost of energy becomes more important. The installed base of offshore wind turbines is expected to rise by up to 5 gigawatts per year through 2020. This project aims to advance the state of the art in wind turbine generator technology by reducing the cost of the turbine and increasing the efficiency of the generator to reduce cost of energy. The generator and gear box are major turbine components and constitute a major part of the cost, complexity and failure modes of wind turbines. The use of the innovative pseudo direct drive (PDD) generator within wind turbines will reduce the capital cost of such installations and subsequent decommissioning, and have a positive impact on operation and maintenance costs. The Compact, High Efficiency Generator (CHEG) project will deliver a pseudo direct drive (PDD) machine based around Magnomatics innovative magnetic gear technology which brings significant advantages in efficiency and reduced costs of maintenance due to its method of transmitting torque through the magnetic gear without the physical contact and subsequent requirement for lubrication required by traditional mechanical gearing. Preliminary overall Cost of Energy (CoE) modelling shows significant advantages from the PDD system when compared to other current machine topologies, with notable advantages in increased efficiency, reducing cost by 2% taking worst case scenarios, high relative annual energy output, reduced mass and reduced maintenance costs. It is accepted by the consortium that the technology being developed, whilst potentially ground breaking in reducing cost of energy, must be affordable to potential end users once serial manufacturing volumes are achieved. It is estimated that the proposed technology with be within 2.5% of the cost of the current state of the art technology when manufactured in similar volumes for a similar output turbine.
| Acronym | CHEG (Reference Number: DW185) |
| Duration | 01/04/2016 - 01/04/2018 |
| Project Topic | Offshore Wind, Topic 1 - Turbine components |
|
Project Results (after finalisation) |
Not available yet - project starting April 2016. |
| Website | visit project website |
| Network | DemoWind |
| Call | Joint Call 2015 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magnomatics Limited | Coordinator | United Kingdom |
| 2 | ORE Catapult Development Services Ltd | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 3 | GL Garrad Hassan Nederland BV | Partner | Netherlands |
| 4 | Newton Derby Limited | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 5 | EDF Energy R&D UK | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 6 | JL Mag | Partner | Netherlands |