Commissioning of the World's First Full-Scale MW-Class Superconducting Generator on a Direct Drive Wind Turbine

Abstract

High temperature superconducting (HTS) generators could enable a lightweight and cost-effective direct drive (DD) wind turbines with large power ratings. The EU-funded EcoSwing project successfully demonstrated the world's first full-scale MWclass HTS generator on a commercial DD wind turbine. This paper focuses on the commissioning of the EcoSwing HTS generator on the wind turbine. The commissioning campaigns, including the rotor cool-down, excitation of the HTS field winding, and the power production of the generator, are presented in the paper. In the testing period, the generator was grid-connected for more than 650 hours and accumulatively produced more than 600 MWh to the grid. The target output power of the 3 MW class was reached. Throughout the real-life testing on the wind turbine, the generator performed well from the electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical perspectives. Moreover, the generator even sustained three sudden short circuits in the converter system. The work reported has shown that HTS generators are technologically feasible for wind turbine applications, and the technology readiness level of HTS Manuscript

Comparison of AC-Superconducting Multi-Phase Symmetric-Winding Topologies for Wind Power Generators with Passive PM Rotors

“…2 The neodymium magnet density is set to 7.4 g/cm 3 . 3 Active weight of the machine. 4 The Torque-To-Weigth is calculated with FEA values from table VII and equation 11.…”

“…Recently three projects have been developed to prove the feasibility of DC-based superconducting machines (SCMs), i.e., a superconducting field winding to enhance the magnetic loading of the machine. Those are INNWIND [1], Suprapower [2], and EcoSwing [3]. The latter has been successfully proved with a technology readiness level (TRL) equal to 7, achieving an airgap shear stress that doubles compared to a permanent magnet generator (PMG) and a weight reduction up to 24 %.…”

Investigation of AC loss of superconducting field coils in a double-stator superconducting flux modulation generator by using T-A formulation based finite element method

“…This enables superconducting machines to be potentially used in electric aircraft [2][3][4][5], wind energy [6,7], maglev train [8,9], ship propulsion [10][11][12] etc, where high torque density is in demand. There have been some successful demonstrations of partially superconducting synchronous wind generators, for example the Suprapower [13] and Ecoswing projects [14][15][16], where rotating superconducting field coils are used to generate magnetic field with DC current and stationary copper armature windings are used with AC current. In this topology, a coupling device for current and cryogenic transfer has to be installed between the rotating rotor and the stationary excitation power and refrigerator.…”

An Electromagnetic Design of a Fully Superconducting Generator for Wind Application

“…Superconductors have a very large current-carrying capability, which enables superconducting machines to be potentially competitive in areas where high power density is required, e.g., electric aircraft, wind energy, maglev train, ship propulsion. The advantages of using superconductors to obtain high power density have been successfully proved by different demonstrations and studies, for instance, the EcoSwing project, which has designed and tested a full-scale direct-drive high-temperature-superconducting wind turbine generator in the real field under practical wind conditions [1][2][3]. That project proved that, by using high-temperature superconductors in the rotor, a wind generator can achieve a 24% weight reduction with a torque density of 40 Nm/kg compared to a permanent magnet counterpart.…”