Design of a New Topology Flux Switching Machine for Direct Drive Wind Power Application

By development of wind power plants especially in offshore applications, higher reliability and more simplicity is required for minimizing provision and maintenance costs. Direct drive generators are reliable alternatives for conventional doubly-fed induction generators since gearbox is omitted from the cycle. The main issue of these generators is their large dimension which makes their manufacturing, transmission, assembly, and installation difficult on the power plant tower. A flux switching generator with a new configuration is proposed in this paper, which has a desired electromagnetic feature for direct drive wind power application. Hence, in line with wind power plant applications, three features including sinusoidal generated voltage, minimum cogging torque, and minimum unbalanced magnetic force are considered as the proposed configuration basis. To assess the electromagnetic performance of topology of the proposed generator, its modelling and simulation is carried out by 2D Finite Element Software. The analysis results confirm the appropriateness of the new structure for power plant applications.