GE to deliver 4.5 Mw Direct Drive wind turbine for offshore application in Sweden

[Bill USA]

http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=10804">GE 4MW direct-drive wind turbines for offshore wind power
March 16, 2011

GE, a top global supplier of onshore wind energy, leapt into the offshore wind farm with the acquisition in 2009 of Norway's ScanWind, a developer of direct-drive wind turbines.


New Design Delivers 5% More Energy Per Unit Than Comparable 3-4 MW Wind power Technology. 50% Reduction in Installation Time with Optimized Design for Reliability. Installation of the New 4.1-113 Wind Turbine in the Gothenburg Harbor Planned for Second Half of 2011.

GE (NYSE: GE) today introduced its 4.1-113 wind turbine, a four-megawatt (MW) class machine that is optimized for offshorewind farm use and is designed to bring a new level of reliability to the offshore wind industry. GE has signed a contract to supply a 4.1-113 wind turbine, along with associated services, to Göteborg Energi for installation in the Gothenburg, Sweden harbor in the second half of 2011, GE announced at the European Wind Energy Association’s EWEA 2011 today. This wind power project is supported by the Swedish Energy Agency through its technology program, demonstrating its interest in leading offshore technology.

With fewer moving parts, the direct-drive technology provides a simple, reliable design with built-in redundancy and partial operation for major components, all focused on keeping turbines operating reliably at sea. The direct-drive technology eliminates costly gearbox parts, lowering operating expenses, and also relies on an innovative modular approach to maximize in-situ repair and reduce the need for large repair vessels. The 4.1-113 blade design is optimized to maximize energy capture.
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http://www.ecoseed.org/wind-energy/offshore-wind/article/57-offshore-wind/7503-g-e-puts-direct-drive-wind-turbines-to-the-test-in-europe">GE to put Direct Drive Wind Turbines to the Test in Europe

Wednesday, June 30, 2010
By Oliver M. Bayani

General Electric Company plans to install five units of gearless wind turbines off Norway’s coast, and another one on land in Sweden, marking the latest innovation in turbine technology development.

The American conglomerate, with Norwegian power companies Statoil (OSL:STL) and Lyse, will conduct technical and environmental feasibility studies for gearless offshore wind turbines off the coast of Norway’s Rogaland county.


Gearless, direct-driven turbines do not have a gearbox, which provides the mechanism for multiplying the speed of the rotation of the shaft. The shaft is connected to the turbine blades which are driven slowly by wind current.

A number of wind turbine manufacturers believe that direct-driven systems will replace gearboxes in the future since it can do the same task more efficiently using a smaller number of parts. With fewer moving parts, the design reduces operating and maintenance costs, making electricity from wind farms more competitive.
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http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/direct-drive-wind-turbines-no-gearbox.php">Is Direct Drive the Future? Wind Turbines Without Gears are Lighter, Cheaper, More Reliable

Squeezing More Power from the Breeze

These days, the wind industry is all about scaling up, cutting costs, and improving reliability. One way to do that, at least according to Siemens and GE, is to replace the traditional gearboxes and high-speed generators with bigger low-speed generators that don't necessitate a geared transmission (that's why they call it 'direct drive'). Here's why this might be the future of wind turbine design...

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Much of the weight reduction comes from the use of permanent magnets in the generators' rotor--a trick that GE is also using. Conventional turbine generators use electromagnets--copper coils fed with electricity from the generator itself. Henk Polinder, an expert in permanent-magnet generators at Holland's Delft University of Technology, says that a 15-millimeter-thick segment of permanent magnets can generate the same magnetic field as a 10- to 15-centimeter section of copper coils. (source)


So while the current gearbox-systems can do the job reliably, direct drive mechanisms that use about half as many parts should be even more reliable and thus reduce operating costs over the long-term, making electricity from wind farms even more competitive.

This is especially important for offshore wind farms because doing maintenance at sea is a lot more complex and expensive than on the ground.
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[Gregorian]

1. I spent ages searching for what you already posted. It's PERMANENT MAGNETS.

Pretty cool. A large diameter with permanent magnets will give a high speed for current generation.

There's more to this than meets the eye. Pretty sophisticated stuff. Stress analysis, fluid dynamics, choreographing the erection in all kinds of weird places.

Here's the way they are erecting the towers-

http://blog.norway.com/2009/08/13/ge-energy-to-acquire-scanwind-in-trondheim/

It beats nonrenewable, but there's a side to this whole energy thing that no one is talking about. Well, except for me and a couple of people who no one wants to listen to.