Wind turbine generator assembly plant

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Excerpt: Location: West Branch, Iowa Technology: Wind turbine generator engineering and assembly Collaborators: Ryan Companies US, Inc; R&M Materials Handling Construction completed: November 2007; turbine assembly commenced December 2007 Wind turbine output: 450 unit annual capacity Turbi …

Help for generator designers

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Excerpt: Developer of MagNet says its Version 7, available mid-spring 2010, will let users simulate the magnetization of a permanent magnet, expand on MagNet's multicore support, and include other new features. V7.1, from Infolytica Corp., will allow simulating and determine the magnetic field strength i …

A Better Way to Protect Generator Bearings

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Excerpt: Although many wind farms in the U.S. are generating electricity and well beyond a testing stage, their debugging continues. Many of these turbines suffer design-related failures within their first few years of operation. Damaged bearings, for instance, can cause generator failures, which lead to …

Will This Contraption Work?

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Excerpt: Here’s inventor Tom Gilmour’s idea for a vertical axis windmill he calls Tom’s Whirligig. Gilmour acknowledges that because of its complexity, he’s not sure it would work if built. Nonetheless, he has patented the design. The windmill consists of a carousel and eight airfoils or blades. T …

Direct-drive generators find more followers

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Excerpt: No gearbox will ever fail in our turbines, says Northern Power Systems VP James Stover. The reason for that is there are no gearboxes in the company's turbines. Stover says his company’s Northwind 100 can still match the power needs of many local applications, whether municipalities, schools, …

Turning vibration into useful dc voltage

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Excerpt: The Joule-Thief energy harvesting modules and demonstration kits are first-of-its-kind random vibration dc power supplies. The design, from AdaptivEnergy, Hampton Roads, Virginia, scavenges and converts ambient mechanical energy, such as vibration and impact events, into a standard dc voltage. Other …

Three generator designs serve many turbines

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Excerpt: ABB says it has developed permanent magnet (PM) generators for applications that call for direct drives, and medium and high-speed. The electrical performance of individual generators can be tweaked for best performance in cooperation with the wind-turbine OEM. For a closer look: A low-speed gear …

Energy-efficient chokes for inverters in wind turbines

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Excerpt: A recent electrical choke design for power inverters in wind turbines is an inductive component that features low losses, low stray fields, a compact design, and energy efficiency.  Developer Sintermetalle Prometheus (SMP), based in Germany, uses materials made of powder composites engineered f …

Rare-Earth Magnets make Mighty Motors

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Excerpt: Rare-earth oxides are the principal materials of high-performance permanent magnets. Shin-Etsu, Lombard, Ill, has a unified production system, meaning it handles all steps from separation and refinement of the rare earth elements, right up to production of the magnets. The company says it suppli …

Tiny turbines might provide building power

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Excerpt: Product designer Agustin Otegui has an idea for an organic skin that could wrap around a building to provide its energy needs. His concept, NanoVent Skin (NVS), is to wrap buildings in an organic lattice made of micro wind turbines, little vertical-axis turbines. Advances in nanotechnology, the …