Direct Drive Wind Turbines Coming To U.S. Offshore Wind [Siemens Direct Drive Turbines Provide Greater Output, Efficiency]

Posted on TFTS by Mike Payne on Friday, 30. April 2010 under: Green Technology

Just days after the U.S. government ok’d a deal for its first offshore wind power facility, Siemens has released a new series of direct-drive wind turbines to meet the coming offshore turbine market demand. The new direct drive wind turbines will be smaller, will contain fewer parts and will produce a greater, more efficient power output.

Traditional wind turbines, such as those that will be used in the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, use a gearbox and rotor, parts which reduce efficiency and output while raising concerns about life expectancy. New direct drive wind turbines forego the gearbox for a permanent magnet and a direct connection to the generator.

Amongst the first to the the utility-scale wind turbine market is the Siemens SWT-3.0-101 direct drive wind turbine. It is rated as a 3 megawatt turbine, a step up from Siemens traditional 2.3 megawatt turbine, and uses only half of the parts of traditional turbines. The Siemens direct drive wind turbine is now available to private and public businesses. It will not see deployment in the Cape Wind offshore wind farm planned for Massachusetts, but it is safe to see its adoption in future offshore and land-based wind farm projects.

Source

http://www.penobscotbay.blogspot.com Ron Huber
Glad to learn of Siemen’s new cleaner & lighter design. Disappointed to learn that Cape Wind _won’t_ be using them.
The state of Maine has taken a different, smarter course on ocean energy exploitation than Massachusetts has. The Maine Legislature & Governor recently decided that cluttering up Maine’s already heavily-exploited and lucratively scenic waters within ten or less miles of shore with this energy-extraction industry would be “dumb growth”.
University of Maine’s Dr Habib Dagher is leading the smarter way further offshore via the DeepCwind Consortium of businesses, academia and entrepreneurs.
“Our plan in Maine is to go 20 miles plus offshore, So that these structures are beyond the horizon,” Dagher told Maine Public Radio News. “You can’t see them from shore.”
DeepCwind is funded to design and deploy a small number of large but over-the-horizon or ‘distant water’ floating wind and wave power generation platforms. Energy loss from lengthy cables returning to the mainland is a problem of the past: new offshore windfarms use novel super-cooled sea-to-shore transmission systems.
Maine’s fishermen, environmentalists and tourist industries are not raising objections, beyond a quibble in Maine Superior Court over where to site a state waters floating R&D test bed for the University’s experimental trials. Near Monhegan? Scenic Impacts!
May 28th is the deadline to submit your prototype design to DeepCwind. Don’t be shy.
Mainers are puzzled why Massachusetts has approved arrays of pole-style water windmills, driven into shallows shoals, looming barely offshore like War of the Worlds invaders. Blinking all night, flickering all day. What could they have been thinking?

Direct Drive Wind Turbines Coming To U.S. Offshore Wind [Siemens Direct Drive Turbines Provide Greater Output, Efficiency]

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