Design of a permanent magnet generator for a sustainable wind energy capture and storage system

The main objective of this dissertation is the detailed design, sizing, analysis and experimental validation of the sustainable wind generator. The proposed machine topology for the generator uses permanent magnets (PMs) from discarded hard disk drives (HDDs). The PM configuration inherently produces a non-uniform air gap flux-density distribution and the pole pitches of the PMs are relatively small. This would result to an unbalanced generator output and a number of stator inter-connecting leads, if conventional tooth-concentrated non-overlapping winding configurations are used. Hence, a concentrated full-pitch overlapping wave winding configuration is developed, which overcomes the aforementioned challenges. The proposed sustainable coreless axial flux generator is then analyzed with classical machine theory and verified by finite element analysis (FEA) software. It is shown that the traditional sizing approach for axial flux machines needs modification to accommodate the design of the proposed machine topology. For the numerical analysis, 3D-FEA is used to verify the 2Dmodel which is subsequently employed in the numerical analyses.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Electrical Engineering

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Jagau, Hartmut

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Khan, Mohamed Azeem
• Barendse, Paul Stanley

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12436

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12436