COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PERMANENT MAGNET MATERIALS FOR WIND TURBINE DRIVEN PERMANENT MAGNET GENERATOR

Abstract

The use of alternate energy resources for electrical power generation has attained a rapid development in the past few decades. In particular, the power generation utilizing wind energy, has achieved a significant growth in countries all over the world. Since, the wind energy conversion system (WECS) is demanded to be more cost competitive, the comparisons of different wind generator systems become necessary. In this paper, a comparison among permanent magnet generators of different topologies is provided in order to choose an appropriate generator for direct drive applications. The direct drive permanent magnet generators are more superior in terms of energy yield, reliability and maintenance. The properties of permanent magnet and the selection of permanent magnet materials play a very important role in the design of permanent magnet generators. This paper also analyzes the different types of permanent magnet materials based on their magnetic, thermal and B-H characteristics. The proposed PMG topology with different types of magnetic materials placed in the rotor is to be modeled using MATLAB/SIMULINK and the generated voltage, voltage reduction, total harmonic distortion and the load current are to be analyzed for fixed wind velocity and different loading conditions.