Performance Analysis of Direct-Drive PM Synchronous Wind Generator for Maximum Power Point Direct Battery Charging

In this paper the use of a direct-drive non-overlap winding permanent magnet synchronous wind generator is investigated for direct battery charging applications. A static finite element based analysis method is proposed to achieve maximum power point matching for a turbine-specific design and for battery charging to commence at the desired cut-in speed. This method makes use of an added external inductance and the performance effects of adding the inductance is investigated. It is shown, among other things, that the proposed finite element based calculation method is very sufficient and not computationally expensive. The required external inductance for maximum power point matching is found to be roughly four times that of the wind generator's internal inductance.