Study on Magnetic Levitation Wind Turbine for Vertical Type and Low Wind Speed

In the world, wind power is one of the most realistic strategic choice to solve the shortage of energy. The wind speeds in most of Chinese zone is much lower than 4 m/s, especially in the cities, but the mechanical frictional resistance of existing wind turbines is too big, usually it can't start up when the wind speed is not big enough. Magnetic Bearing has the features of no mechanical contact, no friction etc. minimizing the damping in the magnetic levitation wind turbine, which enables the wind turbine start up with low speed wind and work with breeze. This paper introduces structure and principle of the proposed magnetic levitation wind turbine. The geometric parameters are optimized using FEM analysis. The system dynamic analysis is performed. The modeling and implementation of an axial position controller is presented, the simulation results show stable levitation and good levitated rotation.