Optimization of a 10 MW Direct Drive HTS Generator for Minimum Levelized Cost of Energy

High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) tapes based on YBCO are expected to reach a 4-fold critical current density improvement at 30 K and 3 T through developments currently underway at the University of Houston as part of an ARPA-e sponsored project. The major objective of this undertaking is to enable the deployment of cost effective direct drive HTS generators for large off-shore wind turbines. The improved conductor performance allows for a significant reduction of the length of HTS tapes required to generate the excitation field and thus to a reduction of the overall generator cost. This paper presents design and optimization work to find the best generator topology based on the 4X conductor to minimize the levelized cost of energy. The electromagnetic model uses the commercial package FlexPDE as the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) solver. The model takes the power and RPM requirements as inputs, and outputs the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for the turbine. The model estimates the actual mass and cost of the generator assuming mass production of multiple units per year. The paper presents the model developed in detail as well as the results obtained from the analysis through Monte-Carlo design space exploration.