Generator manufacturer adds a 7-MW offshore PM unit

 

A manufacturer of permanent magnet (PM) generators and power converters for the wind energy market, says it will be expanding its portfolio with the addition of large PM generators for low- to medium-speed applications primarily intended to meet the growing market for offshore wind turbines with rated outputs within the range of 6 to 8 MW.

The 7-MW PM generator class builds on the foundations laid by the company’s existing range of medium and high-speed generators for onshore installations. By scaling up existing designs that are already in advanced development or early production, Danotek says it can offer wind turbine OEMs, prototype systems optimized to their requirements within 12 months. Both direct drive and medium-speed drivetrains are applicable to offshore installations, the preferred solution being a compromise to the often divergent goals of maximizing reliability (by simplifying gearbox design), minimizing weight, increasing efficiency, and maintaining a low capital cost. Direct drive, low-speed PM generators are physically much larger but allow a less complex drivetrain by removing the need for a gearbox. A single or two-stage gearbox with a medium-speed PM generator is said to deliver a highly reliable drivetrain without incurring the significant additional weight and costs associated with large diameter, direct-drive generators. Danotek’s new product family will be able to scale direct drive and medium-speed drivetrains.

The offshore wind market has been steadily growing globally. From today’s installed base of 4.1 GW, offshore wind is forecast to grow at a CAGR of more than 60% to exceed 70 GW by 2017 (Pike Research, 2011, Global Wind Energy Outlook Report). Growth in offshore wind is primarily driven by increasing demand in Europe and Asia. One of the challenges facing developers of offshore wind projects is the reliability of the wind turbine drivetrain. Traditional double-fed induction generators (DFIG) have the disadvantage of requiring extensive, and potentially expensive, routine servicing of the brush gear and slip-rings. PM generators completely avoid this maintenance headache.

In June 2011, a consortium led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that includes Danotek, was one of six groups selected for an award by the Department of Energy (DOE) to advance next-generation designs for wind turbine drivetrains. The project will focus on reducing the cost of wind energy by optimization of the wind turbine drivetrain, with technology developed being scalable to drivetrains of 10 MW or more. Commenting on the programs’ synergies, says Danotek CEO Don Naab said “We anticipate leveraging knowledge gained from the DOE program to enhance and accelerate our 7 MW offshore generator program.”

Danotek Motion Technologies
www.danotekmotion.com

Texas offshore projects to share $43 million

The Department of Energy recently announced $900,000 in funding for programs in Austin and College Station, as part of 41 projects across 20 states. The University of Texas is getting $500,000 to evaluate the potential effects of offshore wind energy facilities on electronic equipment, such as airborne radar and GPS operations.

The Texas Engineering Experiment Station in College Station will get $400,000 to build on existing computer models to simulate mooring dynamics of offshore wind turbines. DOE says the funding, over five years, is meant to advance turbine design tools and hardware, plus improve information about offshore wind resources.

Department of Energy
www.doe.gov

 

Ag official ready to make farming in Dakotas more beneficial

Undersecretary for rural development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dallas Tonsager, says the nation’s agricultural economy is sound but many rural communities are not benefiting. Value-added agriculture, he says, could help create jobs. “I’m a believer in value-added agriculture,” he said. Cellulosic biofuels, typically ethanol made from plant material other than corn, will provide many opportunities for growth in rural communities when the technology comes of age, he predicts.

“We have agreements with airlines. They want 20 billion gallons of biofuels from agriculture, and they want to fly every plane on biofuels. That’s not going to come from corn. It’s going to come from a lot of things.” However, Tonsager acknowledged that development of any sort is difficult in a down economy. Power from the wind farms could power a large conversion plant.

“But agriculture is doing pretty good,” he said, noting that commodity prices are sound, and most sections of the Dakotas, with exceptions for areas affected by flooding, expect good harvests.

Tonsager said his office’s mission is to “bring needed infrastructure and business to rural communities, and we work with every community we can to get that done.” Projects include the expansion of broadband access, the development of water and sewer systems, and wind energy.

 

DOE
www.doe.gov

R&D lab considers 15-MW wind turbine from superconducting magnets

GE Global Research, the technology development arm of GE, says it has begun work on the first phase of a 2-year, $3 million project from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a next generation wind-turbine generator that could support applications in the 10 to 15-MW range. “With the industry’s quest for higher megawatt machines to maximize clean wind power opportunities in the U.S. and around the globe, new technologies will be needed to support larger scale wind platforms,” said Keith Longtin, Wind Technology Leader, GE Global Research. “Applying more than 30 years of experience with superconducting magnets for MRI systems in healthcare, we’re developing a generator technology that will deliver more power while at the same time reducing the cost of wind power.”

“MRI machines use superconducting magnets to make lower cost systems with higher image quality,” Longtin said. “For wind turbines, we want to apply them to generate more wind power at a lower cost of electricity. The applications are different, but the basic technology is the same.”

Today, most conventional wind turbines use a gearbox to increase slow rotor speeds to a higher rpm needed by induction generators. While such drivetrains are effective in today’s wind turbines, they become expensive as they scale to larger wind platforms because of their additional weight and maintenance needs. It may be possible to get additional power from a larger drivetrain, but it comes with an increase in the cost of electricity.

Longtin says the application of superconducting technology could enable significant improvements to the generator and eliminate the gearbox. The keys are in reducing the size and weight of the generator, while dealing with lower shaft speeds and high torque. Superconducting technology allows a lighter weight generator that uses high magnetic fields made possible by superconducting materials and the fact that such a generator needs less steel than a conventional generator.

GE says its superconducting machine will use an architecture and proven cryogenic cooling to improve the reliability of the complete machine. GE’s proposed superconducting machine aims to have twice the torque density of competing technologies and will further reduce dependence on rare-earth materials prevalent in permanent-magnet generators that are finding favor in many modern turbines. The larger potential power levels of these machines, coupled with better energy-conversion efficiency leads to more favorable economies of scale (e.g., fewer towers for a given wind-farm output) that will help reduce the cost of energy produced by wind turbines.

In addition to the next generation wind turbine generator project, GE says its researchers are driving other key technologies that will allows the economic scale-up of wind. A few details include:

• Using lighter, more advanced composite materials for longer blades to improve wind capture without adding so much weight that it increases the cost of power

• More advanced controls, sensors, and condition monitoring algorithms to reduce operating costs, and

• Developing an array of grid integration technologies to feed larger amounts of wind-generated power into the grid. Such equipment focuses on making sure wind turbines are grid-code compliant and provide grid-friendly features to help utilities more reliably manage larger wind power loads.

The generator project will have two phases. Phase I will focus on developing a conceptual design and evaluating the economic, environmental, and commercial factors associated with it. Phase II will explore the potential commercialization of the technology. The Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) will be a key partner with GE on the generator project, helping GE to investigate and mitigate high-risk technology challenges associated with the project.

GE Global Research
www.GE.com/wind

DOE funds manufacturer with $3M for non-rare-earth motors

 

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $3 million to UQM Technologies Inc for development of non-rare-earth magnet electric motors for use in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. UQM will cost-share 25% of the $4 million effort under the development program. The design of generators for wind turbines may also benefit.

“We are pleased that the DOE has again selected our company to assist in advancing the state-of-the-art in motor and generator technology for electric and hybrid electric vehicles,” said. “This DOE grant will help us apply our extensive experience with the design and engineering of electric motors to the exploration of non-rare-earth magnet motor technology.

“Our objective is to identify and evaluate magnet materials and technology that can deliver the performance buyers expect, broaden our product portfolio, potentially lower magnet cost and limit our exposure to price and supply concerns associated with rare earth magnets,” says UQM Technologies’ President and CEO Eric Ridenour.
“The goal of this new technology that we are developing will be motor designs that apply to a full range of vehicle electrification, from mild hybrid to heavy hybrid to full electric vehicles,” says UQM Technologies’ VP of Engineering Jon Lutz.

UQM Technologies Inc.
www.uqm.com

DOE picks 6 projects for R&D funding

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu says six projects have been selected to receive nearly $7.5 million over two years to advance next-generation designs for wind turbine drivetrains. These R&D projects will focus on reducing the cost of wind energy by increasing component reliability or redesigning drivetrains to eliminate need for some components altogether.  Each project has been selected to receive up to $700,000 to conduct technology cost and readiness assessments during a six-month Phase I. Later, several will be selected for award negotiations of up to $2 million additionally each over 18 months. And the winners are:

 

 

• Advanced Magnet Lab (Palm Bay, Florida) will develop a superconducting direct-drive generator for large wind turbines. President Mark Senti says the high cost of superconducting materials and cryogenically cooling makes little sense for today’s 3-MW wind turbines. But beyond 6-MW, he says, the systems become competitive with conventional generator designs. At 10 MW, “It gives the highest power-per-weight ratio.” There’s also room for improvements. Senti says most superconducting wiring costs $400/m, but new materials of inexpensive magnesium and boron powders promise to substantially lower costs. With improvements in manufacturing and less expensive cooling, superconducting could become economical for wind turbines as small as with MW, making it ideal for both onshore and offshore markets.
• Boulder Wind Power (Boulder, Colorado) will test a permanent magnet-based direct-drive generator to validate performance and reliability of a large utility-scale turbine. Design requirements and improvements will also be documented for turbines up to 10 MW and for turbines deployed offshore.
• Clipper Windpower (Carpinteria, California) will develop and test a drivetrain design that increases serviceability over conventional gearboxes and is scalable to large capacity turbines.
• Dehlsen Associates LLC (Santa Barbara, California) will design and test components for a direct-drive concept. The design may also be applicable to ocean-power devices.
• GE Global Research (Niskayuna, New York) will design and perform component testing for a 10 MW direct-drive generator using low-temperature superconductivity.
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, Colorado) will improve and test a hybrid design that combines advantages of geared and direct-drives through an improved single-stage gearbox and a non-permanent magnet generator which reduces need for rare earth materials. The technology will be scalable to 10 MW, and may be used to retrofit currently deployed 1.5-MW turbines.

DOE
www.doe.gov

More ideas for the smart grid

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has announced new initiatives to support development of the smart grid. He also warned that the country is not doing enough to get the grid ready for renewable energy. He acknowledged that privacy concerns are making some utility customers wary of recent smart meters, which are a key component of the smart grid.

The initiatives include a nonprofit organization, Grid 21, that will promote new smart-grid technologies to consumers, a student competition aimed at improving energy efficiency at home, a series of meetings about Recovery Act smart-grid projects, and a “rapid-response team” to speed reviews of energy-transmission projects. The Department of Agriculture also announced $250 million in loans for rural grid development.

In 10 to 20 years, Secretary Chu sees solar power costing $0.06 to $0.07/kWh making it competitive with fossil fuels. Once that happens, he said, there will be a boom in solar panel installations that may strain the grid.

Solar energy presents a challenge for utilities because output fluctuates with the sun’s position and clouds. Utilities must actively manage the fluctuations, especially in neighborhoods with large numbers of solar panels or electric vehicles that need charging, to ensure that the right voltage levels are maintained and power doesn’t go out.

Renewable sources of energy will also require new transmission lines, especially since some of the windiest or sunniest places are far from large cities, where power is needed most.

Dept of Energy
www.DOE.gov

FERC suggests pay-for-perfomance rule

Fast response, energy-storage flywheels support a more stable, reliable, and efficient electricity grid, says that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR). The rule would require each grid operator under its jurisdiction to structure their regulation market tariffs to provide pay-for-performance. Under pay-for-performance tariffs, grid operators would implement a pricing structure that pays faster-ramping resources a higher price for their service.

Because Beacon’s flywheel systems react in seconds to a grid operator’s control signal — a response exponentially faster than conventional fossil fuel-based regulation resources, pay-for-performance tariffs would let Beacon Power earn increased revenue from the regulation services it provides in those markets. Such markets include the New York ISO, where Beacon is already operating a regulation facility expected to reach 20 MW capacity in Q2 2011.

“FERC’s vote to propose new pay-for-performance market rules is a step in recognizing the superior value that faster-responding regulation resources bring to the grid,” says Judith Judson, Beacon vice president of asset management and market development. “Our experience shows, and FERC agrees, that faster is better.

Fast-responding resources provide important grid stabilization benefits and, as studies indicate, can reduce the overall amount of regulation needed and therefore lower associated costs to consumers.

Frequency regulation is an essential grid-stabilizing service that has typically been performed by slower, less effective, and inefficient fossil-fuel generators. Flywheel-based storage is a proven clean technology that provides regulation service faster and more effectively than fossil fuel-based resources, with zero fuel consumption or CO2 emissions. Furthermore, unlike battery-based systems, the storage capacity of Beacon’s kinetic energy flywheel technology does not degrade as a function of charge/discharge cycles, time, or temperature.

Beacon Power
beaconpower.com

Call for reform to energy R&D

According to report from issued by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) “must go beyond best practices in merit review to the adopt a set of best practices in human resources, procurement, contracting, public-private cooperation, and technology transfer that is currently practiced by leading edge applied research organizations in the public and private sector.”

“Business as usual will not work,” says James Turner, senior counsel and director of energy programs at APLU. “Congress and the Obama Administration are expecting unprecedented energy savings from new energy efficiency technologies and dramatically increased production of renewable energy. Technologies based on EERE research are expected to be deployed in a fraction of the time they have been in the past. Merit-review practices alone will not ensure the results of today’s research projects are available in 2015 or 2020 in a form industry can demonstrate and deploy, but it will be step forward.”

The report, Best Practices in Merit Review, calls for reform of all of processes supporting EERE’s research and development effort to reflect a sense of urgency. Reforms include integrated web-based proposal submission and evaluation tools, effective communication of funding opportunities, and evaluation criteria to applicants and reviewers. Furthermore, fast starts for unproven but promising concepts should be accompanied by lean business practices including streamlined hiring procedures for EERE employees. Lastly, streamlined contracting procedures can get funding in place quickly, and a rigorous set of program reviews move the research along quickly and get more business oriented as the project moves closer to deployment.

The report is the result of the one-day conference, EERE Peer Review Best Practices Workshop. The conference featured descriptions the merit-review processes and research strategies of each of the Federal Government’s major basic and applied research programs as well as speakers from companies and universities among the best in getting research ideas into the commercial market.

Among the recommendations, EERE should:

• Develop its own merit review guidelines geared to its mix of programs, including the flexibility to move quickly, using a DARPA-like internal review approach when appropriate, and to bring in external expertise as needed to supplement internal expertise either in selection or project reviews.
• Enhance in-house expertise by bringing in university and industry experts under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which provides for the temporary assignment of personnel between the Federal Government and other organizations, and let those experts serve as temporary Federal employees.
• Increase use of white papers, concept papers, and pre-proposals, possibly using an interactive process if time permits, in which the applicant gets feedback from the Federal manager and the Federal manager learns the capabilities of the applicant, could help to streamline the proposal submission process and increase proposals’ responsiveness to EERE needs.
• Design processes and initiatives that promote innovative, outside-the-box concepts, and provide funds for early career scientists or engineers. These could include a young-investigator program, seed funding to establish feasibility of technologies that are unproven but innovative and promising, and ways to combine basic and applied research projects.
• Look for alternate routes to technology deployment. Consider investing EERE resources in seedling programs that provide easily approved initial funding for unproven yet promising ideas that could be launched through startups and venture capital.
• Establish mechanisms to enhance and accelerate promising projects. Cut losses by terminating unproductive projects.
• Explore ways to more effectively incorporate transfer of technologies from universities and national laboratories to the companies that will commercialize them. Conduct an analysis of cost sharing and its impact on participation in EERE programs and the commercialization of EERE technologies.

Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities
aplu.org

Wind. What is it good in? Absolutely farming!

Researchers at the Ames Laboratory and the University of Colorado find that wind turbines help channel beneficial breezes over nearby plants.

Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and dryer, help them fend off fungal infestations, and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide [CO2] from the air and soil.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, a scientific society in San Francisco, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and his co-researcher from the University of Colorado announced the preliminary findings of a months-long research program aimed at studying how wind turbines on farmlands interact with surrounding crops.

“We’ve finished the first phase of our research, and we’re confident that wind turbines do produce measureable effects on the microclimate near crops,” said Ames Laboratory associate and agricultural meteorology expert Gene Takle. According to Takle, who is also a professor of agricultural meteorology and director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State University, the slow-moving turbine blades that have become a familiar sight along Midwestern highways, channel air downwards, in effect bathing the crops below via the increased airflow they create.

His colleague in the research is Julie Lundquist, assistant professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, joint appointee at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. Lundquist’s team uses a specialized laser known as a lidar to measure winds and turbulence from near the Earth’s surface to well above the top tip of a turbine blade. “Our laser instrument could detect a beautiful plume of increased turbulence that persisted even a quarter-mile downwind of a turbine,” Lundquist said.

Both Takle and Lundquist stressed that their early findings have yet to definitively establish whether or not wind turbines are in fact beneficial to the health and yield potential of soybeans and corn planted nearby. However, their finding that the turbines increase airflow over surrounding crops, suggests this is a realistic possibility. “The turbulence resulting from wind turbines may speed up natural exchange processes between crop plants and the lower atmosphere,” Takle said.

For instance, crops warm up when the sun shines on them, and some of that heat is given off to the atmosphere. Extra air turbulence likely speeds up this heat exchange, so crops stay slightly cooler during hot days. On cold nights, turbulence stirs the lower atmosphere and keeps nighttime temperatures around the crops warmer. “In this case, we anticipate turbines’ effects are good in the spring and fall because they would keep the crop a little warmer and help prevent a frost,” said Takle. “Wind turbines could possibly ward off early fall frosts and extend the growing season.”

Other benefits of wind turbines could result from their effects on crop moisture levels. Extra turbulence may help dry the dew that settles on plants beginning in late afternoon, minimizing the amount of time fungi and toxins can grow on plant leaves. Additionally, drier crops at harvest help farmers reduce the cost of artificially drying corn or soybeans.

Another potential benefit to crops is that increased airflows could enable corn and soybean plants to more readily extract atmospheric CO2, a needed “fuel” for crops. The extra turbulence might also pump extra CO2 from the soil. Both results could facilitate the crops ability to perform photosynthesis.

Takle’s wind turbine predictions are based on years of research on so-called agricultural shelter belts, which are the rows of trees in a field, designed to slow high-speed natural winds. “In a simplistic sense, a wind turbine is nothing more than a tall tree with a well-pruned stem. For a starting point for this research, we adapted a computational fluid model that we use to understand trees,” said Takle. “But we plan to develop a new model specific to wind turbines as we gather more data.”

The team’s initial measurements consisted of visual observations of wind turbulence upwind and downwind of the turbines. The team also used wind-measuring instruments called anemometers to determine the intensity of the turbulence. The bulk of the wind-turbulence measurements and the crop-moisture, temperature and CO2 measurements took place in the spring of 2010. “We anticipate the impact of wind turbines to be subtle. But in certain years and under certain circumstances the effects could be significant,” said Takle. “When you think about a summer with a string of 105-degree days, extra wind turbulence from wind turbines might be helpful. If turbines can bring the temperature down below 100 degrees that could be a big help for crops.”

Check out this video of Gene Tackle discussing the research

-ameslab.gov