A Better Way to Protect Generator Bearings

Archived; click post to view.
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?

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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

Archived; click post to view.
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 …

Novel magnetic-field manipulation leads to unusual generator

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: One way to wring cost out of a wind turbine is to eliminate the gearbox and at the same time, increase the power density of the generator which would allow reducing its size and weight. Advanced Magnet Lab, Palm Bay, Fla., says it has a generator design that may allow doing so. It uses the c …

Efficient generator stays cool and does not cog

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Clean Energy Technologies, Calgary, Alberta, Canada  is said to have developed a generator for wind turbines that is more efficient than existing designs. The company’s Axial Flux Permanent Magnet (AFPM) generators work at high efficiencies and produce more power at lower wind speeds due …