One to depend on

Designers of a new type of wind turbine generator hope to find applications with offshore wind farms where low maintenance and reliability is key.

Cambridge University spin-out Wind Technologies plans to install the first commercial brushless doubly-fed generator (BDFG) on a 20kW turbine on the university's West site by early next year. It will convert wind energy to electrical energy and help the university meet legislation that requires all new UK buildings to obtain 10 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources.

'The concept behind this generator is not new, but nobody has been able to design a commercial one before,' said Ehsan Abdi, Wind Technologies managing director. 'Understanding the performance of this generator is pretty tough.'

Abdi and a team of PhD researchers from Cambridge have spent the last eight years designing the generator. It works with the same efficiency as wind turbine generators, which are doubly fed induction generators that use the properties of electromagnetic induction to produce electrical voltage — a difference in electrical charge.