Techno-economic comparison of operational aspects for direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines

David McMillan; G.W. Ault

doi:10.1109/TEC.2009.2032596

Techno-economic comparison of operational aspects for direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines

David McMillan, G.W. Ault

Electronic And Electrical Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

52 Citations (Scopus)

982 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The majority of wind turbines currently in operation have the conventional Danish concept design-that is, the three-bladed rotor of such turbines is indirectly coupled with an electrical generator via a gearbox. Recent technological developments have enabled direct drive wind turbines to become economically feasible. Potentially, direct drive wind turbines may enjoy higher levels of availability due to the removal of the gearbox from the design. However, this is only a theory: so far not substantiated by detailed analytic calculation. By providing such a calculation, this paper enables us to quantitatively evaluate technical and economic merits of direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	191-198
Number of pages	8
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion
Volume	25
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TEC.2009.2032596
Publication status	Published - Mar 2010

Keywords

Markov chain
operational comparison
reliability
wind turbines

Access to Document

10.1109/TEC.2009.2032596

Techno-Economic comparison of operation of direct drive and gearbox driven wind turbinesAccepted author manuscript, 1.58 MBLicence: Unspecified

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Projects

1 Finished

Network of Distributed Sensors for Proactive Condition Monitoring of Wind Turbines

Andonovic, I., Harle, D., McArthur, S., McDonald, J. & McNab, A.

EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)

1/10/05 → 30/09/08

Project: Research

Cite this

McMillan, D., & Ault, G. W. (2010). Techno-economic comparison of operational aspects for direct drive and gearbox-driven wind turbines. IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, 25(1), 191-198. https://doi.org/10.1109/TEC.2009.2032596

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