Description

Note: There is a café in the Black Box building, where people can have something to eat or drink prior to the symposium if they wish.

Due to further needs for more sustainable energy production, wind energy continues to grow tremendously, with global growth estimated to average around 35% per year in the coming years. This is also reflected in wind energy plans in neighbouring countries. Germany, for instance, aims for more than 40 GW of installed wind capacity by 2020. UK aims for some 30 GW by 2020, i.e. 25 % of their electrical capacity. The Netherlands also has an ambitious target of 6 GW by 2020. In all these plans, offshore wind will play an important role. It can be supported in this by the statement, that the North Sea is a bigger source of energy than Slochteren (Prof Ad van Wijk, TU Delft).

But to realise all these targets, there are still a lot of difficult bumps to overcome. One of them is the design of wind turbines, optimally tailored to offshore application. In a broad sense, a trend can be discerned that offshore wind turbines will be based on a direct drive topology, i.e. the rotor with the blades are directly coupled to the generator, without the intermediate connection of a (gear) gearbox. The latter in particular is quite maintenance-intensive and therefore makes offshore wind turbines considerably more expensive than onshore due to the harsher conditions for maintenance. A second important advantage of direct drive construction is the significant weight saving. Darwind is therefore guided in the toal turbine design to optimise energy yields and reduce overall lifecycle costs.
XEMC-Darwind is one of the pioneers in direct drive technology with its 5 MW offshore wind turbine. The turbine development is so far advanced at the time of the lecture that the first test turbine is running in ECN's test field.

This symposium will discuss the opportunities but also the pitfalls to be overcome for direct drive turbine technology. The symposium includes a three-part presentation in which the first presentation will provide insight into the choices and the learning process that XEMC-Darwind has gone through, followed by a perspective on generator design in unlocking high-power offshore wind turbines (TU-Delft) and concluding with a discussion of the developments in the field of offshore turbines and associated materials (ECN.

The symposium will be concluded with a panel discussion

Symposium Chair: Prof. Wil Kling, TU/e

18.45 - 19.00 Reception with coffee and tea

19.00 - 19.10
1) Opening by Prof. Kling

19.10 - 19.45
2) 5MW off-shore Direct Drive Turbine, from drawing board to spinning in high wind.
Ing. Kees Versteegh, Chief Technical Officer, XEMC-Darwind

19.45 - 20.20 hrs
3) Generator development for wind turbines.
Dr. Ir. Henk Polinder, TU/Delft

20.20 - 20.40 hrs Break

20.40 - 21.15 hrs
4) Development in the field of Offshore Turbines and associated materials.
Ir. Bert Janssen, ECN

21.15 - 21.45 hrs
5) Panel discussion and conclusion

Location

Eindhoven University of Technology,

building The Black Box; cinema

Organiser

Electrical Engineering

Name and contact details for information

ir. L. Boonstra, t: (040) 221 37 58 or via the e-mail address below:

lboonstra-1@hetnet.nl