Development of high-efficiency permanent magnet synchronous generator for motorcycle application

High-effiriency design of a permanent magnet synchronous generator is discussed in this paper. The application of the generator is a motorcycle, and improvement of the efficiency is focused on to reduce the fuel consumption of the motorcycle. The generator has an outer rotor configuration, and has a single-phase winding for compact motorcycles and three-phase windings for large motorcycles on the stator. There are a lot of restrictions on designing this kind of auxiliary machines because of the cost, mechanical and electrical compatibility with conventional motorcycles, productivity, and so forth. The new design is conducted through the FEM based three-dimensional electromagnetic analysis, and approximately 10-% power loss is reduced through the development, which can contribute the mileage improvement or the reduction of the fuel consumption of the motorcycle.