FEASIBILITY OF UPSCALING WIND TURBINE

GENERATION CAPACITY
Kamdin Shafiepour (4725077), Nidarshan Kumar (4735196), Prajwal Chitlure Prahallad (4735447)

Abstract - To construct towering wind turbines have become a matter of prestige in recent
years. And mega enterprises are taking this competition to a next level. In this paper, we
have tried to describe the technologies that are helping to achieve higher (MW) power
production from a single wind turbine. Though it may seem obvious that we can increase
the energy production by just upscaling the turbines, there are a lot of structural and
environmental concerns due to upscaling. Moreover, to do so, research must happen not
only in the field of wind turbine, but in all other interdisciplinary fields such as transport,
assembling and so on. With increase in power derived from wind, it is important to
upgrade the drive train capacity to maximize electricity generation. For this, control
strategies adapted and power electronic devices plays a major role. Overall this literature
survey consolidates the techniques implemented on drive train components (especially,
generator and control systems) in focus of improving power production from wind
turbine.

Introduction
The high energy demand is driving the big power industries to search for cost-effective solution
for energy production. Wind energy, being one of the most essential renewable sector, wind
technology enthusiasts and prominent power industries are motivated to improve the efficiency
and capacity of each wind turbine. Wind turbines rated 5-6 MW are most common these days.
Upscaling (increasing the production capacity) of these turbines yields in a cost-effective
solution for the higher power generations.
Upscaling to higher power production from each wind turbine also have many potential risks
involved. These risks are not just limited to the design and construction of the huge wind
turbines but are also involved in transport, installation and mitigation of the environmental
concerns due to upscaling. Overcoming them could lead to a higher energy generation for a
small increase in investment with a bit higher space consumption.
The main purpose of this paper is to identify the different setbacks in upscaling of wind turbines
to high MW rating and how could they be solved.
The paper is structured to start with a paragraph for discussing the importance of upscaling,
followed by the limiting factors for the upscaling, then we move on to discuss the various
technologies which aim at increasing the generation capacity and various control strategies
which support these technologies. Finally, a paragraph to debate on all introduced topic and
conclude the paper.

Need for Upscaling

In the race to supply the world with carbon-free renewable energy, there have been encouraging
signs in wind power, with costs reducing to half over the last decade. Levelized cost of
Electricity Generation in $/MWh has decreased from $101 to $37 over the span of 5 years
(2009 – 2015) [3]. But how might a wind gen set manufacturer get those prices even lower? This
is possible by increasing the production capacity (upscaling) of the turbine. According to the
aerodynamics theory, the power output of a wind turbine is proportional to the square of a rotor
diameter and a cubic of wind speed [1]. The overall mechanical power (P) derived from any
wind turbine is given by
1
𝑃= 𝜌 𝐶 (𝜆, 𝜃)𝜋𝑟𝑏2 𝑣𝑤3
2 𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑃
Where, ρair is the air mass density, vw is the wind speed, rb is the rotor radius (or the
blade length), and Cp is the power coefficient, which depends on the specific design of the
blade, the blade pitch angle θ, and the tip speed ratio λ (blade tip speed divided by wind speed)
[2]
. Thus, a bigger rotor radius yields a higher power output.
But this should not be the only direction to focus, in tandem with this growth spurt, one should
concentrate on different drive train combinations and gear box-generator models to make
efficient conversion of mechanical power generated to electrical power. Smaller Group of
turbines capture less wind power with high installation and maintenance costs compared to a
single large turbine [3]. But questions like if turbines can be made bigger, what is limiting its
size will be discussed in next section.

Limitations of Upscaling
Authors Nicolas Fichaux et al., in their upwind report have extrapolated the results of a 5MW
turbine to understand the feasibilities in production of a 20MW turbine [3].

Table 1: Extrapolated results for a 20MW turbine using a 5MW turbine [3].
The extrapolated results in Table 1 show that it is difficult to build a 20MW turbine.
The 20MW turbine is huge in dimensions, constituting of tower top mass of 880 Tones with a
blade length of 120m and a blade thickness of 30cm placed at 153m high. It almost seems
impossible to build such huge structure. To build, transport, install and operate such structures,
research and advancements must happen in all the relevant areas simultaneously. Further in
upwind report, authors have compared the different generators available in the market and
found that most of them are electromagnetically optimized and it would be difficult to reduce
the weight of the generators when we upscale them. Thus, adding up more weight of drive train
to the turbine [3]. With the great structures comes the great responsibility. Each part of the
turbine must have a fail proof design, capable of handling the system in emergency situations.
Lot of sensors, actuators and controls are required to ensure this, which constitutes to the
significant increase in total cost.
Looking in to the environmental point of view, though it may seem that wind turbine doesn’t
cause much harm to the nature and society, there are many concerns due to it. Some of them
even gets worse as the generation capacity is increased. The major concern which increases
with upscaling is noise due to the wind turbines. According to J. Helsen et al. [4], there are two
kinds of noises due to wind turbine, one structural noise and another airborne. And they claim
that the structural noise could be mitigated through proper mechanical design whereas it is
difficult to suppress the airborne noise from the wind turbine. We can see in the Figure 1 that
the airborne noise level increases proportionally with increase in the generation of the power.

Figure 1: Increase in airborne noise level with increase in generation capacity [4].
According to National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, a sound of above 85dB can cause hearing loss to a
human being [5]. Apart from causing hearing problems, the environment around the turbine
would also be noise polluted which disturbs the ecosystem. Thus, we can conclude that,
upscaling is not just limited by cost, research and feasibility, it is also limited by the
environmental threats due to upscaling.

Solution towards Upscaling

From Literature survey, wind energy being exist for more than two centuries has led to
innumerable fronts of technologies that can be explored. The aim for both current wind turbine
sizes and for future larger-scale designs is to increase efficiency, reliability and predictability.
This results in 5 major state of art electric generators and power electronic convertor models
that are currently being used as seen in Figure 2.

SCIG: Squirrel Cage Induction Generator.

DFIG: Doubly Fed Induction Generator.
WRIG: Wound Rotor Induction Generator.
PMSG: Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator.
Figure 2: Block diagram of hydraulic pitch angle controller [6]
 Figure 3: Block diagram of hydraulic pitch angle controller [4]
Out of all these, Permanent Magnet Generators (PMG), currently picking up the wind energy
market with new creative designs, and with main intension of increasing efficiency and
reliability. Radial Flux PMG (RF PMG) has little room for optimisation but their structure is a
compromise between weight and diameter. But it has lowest active mass utilization which acts
as a baseline for further analysis. Survey has proven that Transversal Flux PMG (TF PMG) are
lighter and thus avoiding a linear increase of the top of mast weight ratio for large turbines, and
increases feasibility for upscaling [3]. But though these machines have advantages such as low
copper losses due to simple windings and high force density, it has complicated design and
difficult to manufacture thus hindering large scale production and low power factor. From
upwind report a configuration with multiple-slots is proposed which shorten the length of the
flux path, which minimizes the active mass in TFPM generators. The active mass comparison
of different 10 MW Permanent Magnet generators are shown in Figure 3, where nine non-alike
TFPM generators are compared to the RFPM generator. The figure depicts that the claw pole
design up to four slots per phase and with limited pole area has a lesser active mass [4]. Gear
Box being the most wear out prone component, research through various analysis and
simulation tools like Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Multi Flexible Body Dynamics (MFBD)
simulation tool are performed.

Future Generator Systems

Advancements in upcoming generator technologies including hydraulic transmissions,
alternative Direct Drive generators, brushless DFIGs, magnetic pseudo Direct Drives are
discussed in this section. Alternative to various simulation analysis of gear box, a new line of
research is concentrating to adapt hydraulic transmissions which has two variants developed
by two different sets of industries. Firstly, WinDrive (of Voith) bases its research on torque
converter or a hydrodynamic transmission, which gives energy and takes energy from turbine,
but if rotor turbine is slow then this doesn’t produce enough pumping action and may fail the
system. Secondly, positive displacement pumps or hydrostatic pumps where pressurized
cylinders containing oil are used to drive. The Wikov system is a combination of a hydraulic
systems and a gearbox, while the gearbox is excluded in the Chap Drive and Artemis systems
[7]
.
Alternative Direct Drive Generator uses TFPM technology as scaling functions illustrate [8]
With higher power levels, torque level increases more than proportional to the power level.
And since TFPM has the flexibility to increase sheer stress. DDG TFPM is the best in the
market but it has complicated construction due to the 3-D flux paths and issues with low power
factor [9].
There are many researches focusing on decreasing the cost of the energy. Controller plays an
important role to control the power produced by wind energy. Another role of control system
is to ensure the safety of the operation and guaranty the long life of the system. One should
choose wisely among the different control strategies as they have big influence on the wind
operation. By choosing a right control strategy we in fact choose the right steady state values
for the rotational speed of the rotor and the generated power of wind speed. In this way the
steady state values for pitch blades and reaction torque of the generator is clarified [10].
Controlling the pitch of the blade and speed of the generator are the most effective methods to
improve the efficiency of wind energy conversion and stability of output power [11]. The pitch
angle controller monitors the operation and adjusts the pitch of the blade to control the speed
of the rotor and regulates the output power mechanically.
The output torque of the wind turbine controls the angular speed which in turn controls the
mechanical output power. The turbines with high rated generators are integrated with pitch
angle to protect the wind generator from sudden wind gust [12]. During lower wind speeds the
pitch of the blade is adjusted to rotate the rotor at higher speed thus increasing the power of the
machine. The pitch angle controller has an effect on the rotor’s speed in a way that during high
speed wind it limits the speed of the rotor and therefore makes generator to operate in much
safer mode, but if the controller is unable to control the speed then it acts as a braking system.
[13]
. The pitch angle control and the rotational velocity control are determined according to the
changes in wind speed. The aerodynamic power produced by the wind turbine is controlled by
adjusting the pitch angle of wind turbine. There is a negligible power loss caused by pitching
of blade and therefore the power generated is the same as the power produced by wind
generator.
Pitch system as seen in Figure 4 is grouped in two sections: hydraulic controller which uses
hydraulic actuator and electric pitch controller which includes electro mechanical actuator to
control the blade and includes an electric motor, a gear box a power supply unit and an energy
storage system.
 Figure 4: Block diagram of hydraulic pitch angle controller [14]
Role of control strategies and their importance is increasing to harvest energy more efficiently
from the wind power [15]. The alternative behaviour of the wind speed creates a challenging
task to control strategy to obtain high quality and reliable power supply.

Conclusion
Upscaling of Wind Energy systems has now become a promising technique after considering
most of the debatable pros and cons. Results from above discussions on namely Hydrodynamic
Transmission systems, High sensitive pitch controllers, Alternative DD’s and Magnetic pseudo
DD’s have shown confidence on upscaling.
From the literature review, we can conclude that there is no convergence on a unique best
wind generation system for increasing MW generation. Each wind gen-set manufacturer has
their own patented technology with dedicated control methods which are being upgraded to
present competition level. And every three years the cycle of superior technology toggles.
There is numerous hypothesis placed on table with years of analytical research. Yet it takes
courage for major industries to invest on them, as wind energy is one of the most expensive
technologies compared to other renewable sources.

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