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New ideas aim to reduce the cost of wind-generated power

By Paul Dvorak | January 24, 2013

This article was written from a presentation by Homan Seyedin and Frank Richert.

SkyLift

The blade and generator would presumably be hoisted to the tower and fixed in place. 

Reducing costs is a big deal for any product design team. A new turbine manufacturer in Germany, SkyWind, has given a good deal of thought to revising most of what passes for a modern turbine. Company engineers have devised a method whereby the tower becomes the crane to lift the generator and rotor.

Although public details are sketchy, SkyWind 3.4 is the generator, SkyFormer is the grid connection system, SkyConrol is a cluster or wind farm control, SkyMount is a clever installation system for the tower, and SkyLift is a lift system for service and maintenance.

The company goal is to produce a 3.4 MW wind turbine for difficult to access sites, hence no need for a crane. It would provide a universal platform for different drivetrain concepts. The company won an engineering award for its modularity which presumably simplifies maintenance. Of course, the ultimate goal is to minimized the cost of energy. The strategies proposed by the company include avoiding external cranes for installation and maintenance. The size and mass of components will be optimized, while service and maintenance are simplified.

SkyLift

The SkyWind turbine also features an elastic coupling to the tower to accommodate gusts and sudden changes to wind directions.

The authors designed the turbine with the assistance of Simpack software which provided multibody simulations. This was essential, they say, because designing and evaluating new concepts efficiently requires simulating the complete system with different levels of model quality. In addition, the combination of elastic components called for an accurate representation of rotor aerodynamics, a specialized control mechanism to model generaor-to-grid behavior, and interfaces to other codes and routines. The full presentation is here: http://www.simpack.com/fileadmin/simpack/doc/usermeeting11/UM_2011_presentations/Day_2_Wind_General/02_um11_SkyWind_Richert_Development_SkyWind_3X_WindTurbine_with_SIMPACK.pdf

Simpack
www.simpak.com

SkyWind
www.skywind.de

The illustration shows some internal details of the SkyWind gearbox and generator.

The illustration shows some internal details of the SkyWind gearbox and generator.


Filed Under: News, Turbines

 

About The Author

Paul Dvorak

Comments

  1. Minwoo Kim says

    January 26, 2013 at 6:02 am

    Obama’s energy policy is right. Japan’s FiT in July is among the highest in the world. Japan’s FiT is shaking the renewable energy market. New solutions will be showed in Japan. This is it! Floating wind turbine is one of the best solutions for USA and UK. UK has more install places around its shores than any other in the world. USA has Atlantic Coast. As you know, Every year Some typhoons arrive Japan. The typhoon has strong wind. Floating wind turbines must have constructed to resist typhoons. So they have to reduce vibration to install floating wind turbines on the sea. Because, it makes many kinds of problems! It’s increasing the durability problem of floating wind turbine. Vibration’s caused by wind, waves and external forces. New Floating Body Stabilizer for floating wind turbines has been created in South Korea. The Floating Body Stabilizers generate drag force immediately when floating wind turbines are being rolled, pitched and yawed on the water. Recently, this Floating Body Stabilizers have been used to reduce vibration of floating solar panels in South Korea. You can see New Floating Body Stabilizer videos in YouTube. http://youtu.be/O2oys_YHhCc, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA_xFp5ktbU&feature=youtu.be.

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