Power Transmission
Fig. 1. A Schaeffler wind turbine gearbox.
4 Wind is a potential energy source that most Britons are never thankful for. Boris Sedacca delves into the intricacies of mechanical to electrical energy conversion.
4 Le vent est une source d’énergie potentielle pour laquelle la plupart des Britanniques ne sont jamais reconnaissants. Boris Sedacca plonge dans la complexité de la conversion de l’énergie mécanique en énergie électrique.
4 Wind ist eine mögliche Energiequelle, die die meisten Briten nicht sehr zu schätzen wissen. Boris Sedacca setzt sich mit den Feinheiten der Umwandlung von mechanischer in elektrische Energie auseinander.
A second wind for the UK economy
W 40
www.engineerlive.com
ind energy is one of the cheapest of the renewable energy technologies. Because of its geographic location within the Gulfstream in
the North Atlantic, the UK is believed to have 40 per cent of the whole collection of possibilities for wind farms in Europe. However, taming this energy and harvesting it effectively occupies the minds of transmission engineers throughout Europe. It all depends on factors like turbine size, use, site
conditions and whether a single turbine is to be used or several turbines in a wind farm. Turbine size can be anything from a kilowatt to several megawatts and this has a bearing on drivetrain design. For today’s utility scale wind turbines there are
two main electrical drivetrain concepts according to ABB - doubly fed and full converter. The primary
difference in these concepts is the type and size of generator used and the function of the converter. The full converter can be further categorised into low-speed (also known as direct-drive because it does not require a gearbox), medium-speed, and high-speed.
While the market has largely been dominated by
the doubly fed concept, the full converter concept is gaining market share. There are several factors driving this shift, including grid code compliance and optimised power generation at slower wind speeds.
Doubly fed uses a wound rotor asynchronous
generator where the rotor windings are connected to a small converter using slip-rings and brushes, while the full converter decouples the generator and the mechanical drivetrain from the grid with all the generated power flowing through the converter to the grid.
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