IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 21, NO.

3, JUNE 2011

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Study of 10 MW-Class Wind Turbine Synchronous Generators With HTS Field Windings
Satoshi Fukui, Jun Ogawa, Takao Sato, Osami Tsukamoto, Naoji Kashima, and Shigeo Nagaya
AbstractWe study the electro-magnetic design of 10 MW-class wind turbine generator with high temperature superconducting eld winding by using the FEM analysis. The design examples are presented and the generator characteristics are investigated. The 10 MW-class HTS wind turbine generator is considered to be feasible from the stand point of the electro-magnetic design. In this study, 8-pole and 12-pole generators are investigated. From the results, it is considered that the 8-pole design is preferable compared with the 12-pole design. The analysis also reveals the small synchronous reactance of the HTS wind turbine generator. Therefore, proper protection is necessary for the large short circuit current. Index TermsHTS eld winding, synchronous generator, wind turbine generator.
TABLE I BASIC DESIGN CONDITION OF 10 MW WIND TURBINE GENERATOR

I. INTRODUCTION

EVELOPMENT and introduction of wind power generators have recently advanced in the R & D of renewable energies [1][3]. Scaling-up of wind turbines is one of recent R & D trends because of the scale merits. In the present situation, it is considered that a 5 MW wind turbine is the power limit of the conventional generator technology. However, a further increase of the out-put power of the wind turbine generators, more than 5 MW, is required. Therefore, a break-thought technology to develop light weight and compact wind turbine generators is surely expected [4][6]. With recent progress of fabrication technologies of long length and high critical current 2G HTS tapes (ex. YBCO tape), it is promising to develop high magnetic eld HTS coils for power apparatuses. By applying HTS to the wind turbine generators, it is expected to provide the light weight and compact design, since the magnetic eld can be higher compared with the conventional generator, so that the iron core can be considerably reduced. Therefore, it is considered that the application of the HTS technology to the wind turbine generator is one of the key issues to break the technical power limit of the conventional wind turbine generator. In this study, we focus to apply high temperature superconductivity for the 10 MW-class

wind turbine generators. In this paper, the electromagnetic design of 10 MW-class wind turbine synchronous generator with HTS eld windings is studied. The design examples of the HTS wind turbine generator are presented and the generator characteristics are discussed. II. ELECTRO-MAGNETIC DESIGN OF 10 MW HTS WIND TURBINE GENERATOR A. Design Condition The electro-magnetic design of 10 MW wind turbine generator with HTS eld windings is performed by using FEM analysis. In this study, the 3-phase generator with the rated voltage of 3.3 kV (phase-to-phase) is considered. The number of the revolution is 10 rpm [5]. In Table I, the basic design condition is summarized. B. High Temperature Superconducting Field Winding For the HTS eld winding, the high magnetic eld design is necessary to effectively use the advantage of HTS. In this design, we consider that the strength of the main magnetic eld produced by the HTS eld windings at the position of the armature winding should be 2.53 T which exceeds the saturation value of the magnetic eld in the conventional magnetic core material. To secure the higher magnetic eld, the armature windings should be supported in the non-magnetic material and the back yoke made of the magnetic material is used for the purpose of magnetic shield. In this analysis, it is considered that the HTS eld winding is operated at 20 K and the rated current density is set at . Fig. 1 shows the schematic illustrations of the cross section and the FEM models of the wind turbine generators with the HTS eld windings which are analysed in this study. The sizes of the HTS eld coil are also shown in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, the model-1 is for the case of 8-pole generator and the model-2 is for the case of 12-pole generator respectively. The FEM analysis is rstly performed to obtain the magnetic eld distribution around the armature winding. Fig. 2

Manuscript received August 03, 2010; accepted October 21, 2010. Date of publication November 18, 2010; date of current version May 27, 2011. This work supported in part by Chubu Electric Power Co. Inc. S. Fukui, J. Ogawa, and T. Sato are with Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Niigata, 950-2181, Japan (e-mail: fukui@eng. niigata-u.ac.jp). O. Tsukamoto is with Yokohama National University, Kanagawa, 240-8501, Japan (e-mail: osami-t@ynu.ac.jp). N. Kashima and S. Nagaya are with Chubu Electric Power Co. Inc., Aichi, 459-8522, Japan (e-mail: Kashima.Naoji@chuden.co.jp). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TASC.2010.2090115

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Fig. 2. Distribution of radial components of magnetic eld around armature winding. (a) Model-1 (8-pole) and (b) model-2 (12-pole).

Fig. 1. Schematic illustrations of cross section of 10 MW HTS wind turbine generators and their FEM models. (a) Model-1 (8-pole) and (b) model-2 (12pole).

voltage (phase-to-ground) in the armature winding, proximately expressed by

, is ap(1)

shows the distributions of the radial magnetic eld on the az, 1446 mm and 1456 mm. It is conimuthal line of rmed that the magnetic eld around the armature winding can be around 2.53 T. From the data shown in Fig. 2, the magnetic eld in the model-2 is smaller than that in the model-1. When the pole number becomes large with same diameter, the distance between the neighboring eld coils decreases. The magnetic ux produced by the eld coils passes nearby the eld coils and the magnetic eld around the armature windings decreases. It is also found that the necessary amount of the HTS wire for the model-1 is much smaller than that for the model-2. Therefore, it is considered that the 8-pole design (model-1) is preferable compared with the 12-pole design (model-2). As also shown is saturated. in Fig. 2(a), the magnetic eld at This is the effect of the magnetic saturation of the back yoke. In Table II, the specications of the HTS eld winding are summarized. C. Armature Winding In this design, we consider that the armature winding is the 2-layer winding with the distributed structure. The slot numfor the model-1 and bers per phase and per pole are for the model-2 respectively. For the FEM analysis, the number of the Cu armature conductor in each slot, , must be estimated. Assuming that spatial distribution of the magnetic eld is sinusoidal with the amplitude of , the induced phase

is the rated revolution (rpm), is the mean radius where of the armature winding, is the length along the generator axis which is effective for the power conversion, is the pole should be an even number becasuse of the 2-layer number. is winding. Considering the data shown in Fig. 2, used. The cross section of the slot and Cu conductor for the armature winding should also be determined by considering the geometrical constraints as follows. (2) (3) (4) (5) where and are the cross section and the current density is the of the Cu area in the armature conductor respectively, and are the slot packing factor of the Cu in the slot, are the height height and the slot width respectively, and and the width of the Cu part in the armature conductor respectively. Based on the above consideration, the specications of the armature windings are determined as shown in Table II. III. FEM ANALYSIS OF GENERATOR MODELS A. Basic Characteristics The basic generator characteristics of the model-1 and the model-2 are investigated based on the results of the FEM

FUKUI et al.: 10 MW-CLASS WIND TURBINE SYNCHRONOUS GENERATORS WITH HTS FIELD WINDINGS

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TABLE II DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS OF 10 MW WIND TURBINE GENERATOR

analysis. Figs. 3(a) and 3(c) show the waveforms of the phase voltage at the rated eld current and the rated revolution. The root mean square values of the phase voltage obtained by the FFT of the voltage waveforms are plotted against the frequency in Figs. 3(b) and 3(d). From the data shown in Fig. 3, it is conrmed that the phase voltage can be secured for the output power of 10 MW. It is also shown in Fig. 3 that there are no signicant high harmonic components in the phase voltage. The no-load saturation curves and the short-circuit curves are obtained from the FEM analysis and the data are shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4, the horizontal axis represents the ratio of the current density of the eld winding to that of the rated value, . As shown in Fig. 4, the short-circuit curves are very sharp against the normalized eld current, since the magnetic induction of the armature winding is much smaller than that of the HTS eld winding. Therefore, we consider that the calculation of the synchronous reactance from the data in Fig. 4 is difcult. The synchronous reactance should be determined from the data of the resistance-load analysis shown in the nest section. B. Resistance-Load Analysis The resistance-load analysis is performed combining the FEM analysis and the circuit analysis. In this analysis, the

Fig. 3. Phase voltage waveforms and root mean square values of phase voltage in no-load analysis. (a) and (b) model-1, (c) and (d) model-2.

balanced 3-phase resistive load is connected to the generator model. In this analysis, the values of the resistance are 1.03 for the model-1 and 0.99 for the model-2 respectively, which are determined for the output power of 10 MW. Fig. 5 shows the waveforms of the phase voltage and the line current obtained by the resistance-load analysis. From the voltage and current waveforms shown in Fig. 5, it is conrmed that output power is 10.1 MW for the model-1 and 9.83 MW for the model-2 respectively. The synchronous reactance is also obtained from the consideration of the equivalent circuit of synchronous generator and using the data shown in Fig. 5. The values of the synchronous reactance are 0.203 (0.198 pu) for the model-1 and 0.217 (0.215 pu) for the model-2. This small value of the synchronous reactance is the unique feature of the

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Fig. 4. No-load saturation curves and short-circuit curves. (a) Model-1 and (b) model-2.

Fig. 5. Waveforms of phase voltage and line current in case of resistance-load analysis. (a) Model-1 and (b) model-2.

superconducting machine, since the magnetic induction of the armature winding is much smaller than that of the HTS eld winding. A similar result is reported in [6]. Generally, the small synchronous reactance may cause the large short circuit current in the case of accidents. It is considered that proper protection methods should be combined in the case of actual installation. IV. SUMMARY The electro-magnetic design of the 10 MW-class wind turbine generator with the HTS eld winding was studied in this paper. Two possible design examples were presented and the generator characteristics were investigated by using the FEM analysis. It is considered that the 10 MW-class HTS wind turbine generator is feasible from the stand point of the electromagnetic design. It was found from the FEM analysis that the magnetic eld in the 12-pole design is smaller than that in the 8-pole design. The necessary length of the HTS wire for the 8-pole design was signicantly smaller than that for the 12-pole design. The total amount of the Cu in armature winding of the 8-pole design was also smaller than that of the 12-pole design. Therefore, it is concluded that the 8-pole design is preferable compared with the 12-pole design. It was notable that signicant high harmonic components in the voltage and current were not observed. This is effective from the view point of the AC

loss reduction. It was also pointed out that the synchronous resistance was very small. If the synchronous reactance of the generator is small, the short circuit current in the case of the accident becomes large. Therefore, proper protections should be studied together with the development of the HTS wind generator. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Prof. H. Ohsaki of the University of Tokyo for the useful discussions and Mr. M. Hasegawa of Niigata University for the assistance of FEM analysis. REFERENCES
[1] US DOE EERE, 2008 [Online]. Available: http://www.eere.energy.gov/DOE/GO-102008-2567 [2] Enercon Wind Turbines [Online]. Available: http://www.enercon.de/ [3] G. M. J. Herbert, S. Iniyan, E. Sreevalsan, and S. Rajapandian, A review of wind energy technologies, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 11, pp. 11171145, 2007. [4] C. Lewis and J. Muller, A direct drive wind turbine HTS generator, in IEEE Power Engineering Society General Meeting, 2007, pp. 18. [5] A. B. Abrahamsen, N. Nijatovic, E. Seiler, T. Zirngihl, C. Trholt, F. B. Nrgard, N. F. Pedersen, N. H. Andersen, and J. stergard, Superconducting wind turbine generators, Superconductor Science and Technology, vol. 23, p. 034019, 2010. [6] G. Snitchler, Progress on high temperature superconductor propulsion motors and direct drive wind generators, presented at the The 2011 International Power Electronics Conference, Sapporo, Japan, 2011 [Online]. Available: http://www.ipec2010.org/