AN INNOVATIVE TYPE OF SYNCHRONOUS ELECTRIC GENERATOR WITHOUT RARE EARTH MATERIALS AND WITH HIGH EFFICIENCY

摘要

Since 2002 Sicme Motori started the project SICMEWIND for the development and construction of synchronous PM generators for wind applications at low and medium speed, up to 3 MW rated power. Since the cost of rare earth materials dramatically increased since last spring, Sicme Motori faced a challenge to find a cost-effective solution in order to continue proposing synchronous machines for wind turbines. Synchronous reluctance machines can be used as generator, even though they are mainly known for motoring applications. This is a fact which doesn't require to be proven. The originality of Sicme Motori's offer is in a a new type of assisted synchronous reluctance machine (ASR) for generator applications and without rare earth materials. Sicme Motori, after acquiring a patent license for the design and production of SR machines, continued to develop these concepts, specifically investigating and prototyping the possibility to have Ferrite assisted machines, so getting rid of rare earth materials, whose cost suddenly increased last year and is always affected by finance speculating operations and, furthermore, facing the difficult task to design SR machines for multi-polar solutions, such having a product suitable for medium speed operation (hybrid machines and mini-wind applications) and currently investigating the further development to low speed applications (direct driven multi-MW generators).