Feasibility Study of a 10 MW MgB2 Fully Superconducting Generator for Offshore Wind Turbines

Offshore wind is considered a vital component of the future large scale renewable generation portfolio. Intense R&D effort is occurring in both the technology and the supply chain aiming at cost reduction. The drivetrain of wind turbines is an area of continuous evolution with currently no one standard configuration in the industry. It is anticipated that in order to upscale offshore wind turbines in the 10+ MW power range innovation is necessary in this subsystem. A possible solution could be the adoption of superconductivity technology. The potential benefits are multiple comprising weight, dimension and cost reduction in both capital and operating costs. In this paper a rough analytical design is presented of an MgB2 fully superconducting wind turbine generator (WTG). An analytical current sheet distribution is adopted to calculate the magnetic field of the generator and a finite element method (FEM) analysis is used to verify the field calculation. The objective of this work is to assess the technical feasibility of this generator topology and attempt to extract more general conclusions regarding the potential application of superconducting drivetrains in offshore wind turbines.Electrical Sustainable EnergyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc