Superconducting Direct Drive Wind Turbine Generators: Advantages and Challenges

This chapter contains a discussion of the advantages and challenges of introducing superconducting generators in future wind turbines. A special focus is given to the European offshore wind turbine marked, because this is the most mature and because the European Union (EU) has decided on a 20% renewable energy share of the electricity by 2020. Thus there are already scenarios of how the offshore wind power capacity is expected to develop in EU over the next two decades and this is used as the framework for a discussion of the advancements needed to make the superconducting drive trains feasible. The text is organized in a section first outlining the EU offshore plans; a section on the different drive trains; a section on the materials used to produce and shape the magnetic field in the generators and finally a section on the superconducting, vacuum, cryostat and cooling challenges of the superconducting direct drive technology.

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