Development of a Novel Brushless Power Split Transmission System for Wind Power Generation Application

This paper presents a novel gearless and brushless power split transmission system for variable-speed constant-frequency wind power generation application. The core element of this system is a novel axial-flux doubly fed dual-rotor permanent magnet machine. The key of the design is to utilize the flux modulation principle to modulate the magnetic flux in an axial-flux machine and use doubly fed stator winding to control the rotor rotation. This design combines the merits of direct-drive machines and doubly fed generators. As the mechanical problems related to brushes, slip rings, and gear boxes are successfully overcome, the operational reliability of the system is improved. The stator winding of the proposed system can be directly connected to the power grid, and the power rating of its associated frequency converter is reduced. Time-stepping finite-element method is used to analyze the dynamic performance of the proposed system.