Power-Split Hydrostatic Transmissions for Wind Energy Systems

Abstract

In a wind turbine, if a continuously variable transmission is placed between the turbine rotor and the generator, the speed ratio can be tuned to match the variable rotor speed to the constant speed of the electric generator, thus eliminating the need to adapt the frequency to the grid. In this paper, power-split hydrostatic transmission (PS-HTS) architecture is proposed as a suitable continuously variable transmission for application to wind turbine systems. The performance of PS-HTS is modelled and compared with that of previously proposed architectures in which the hydrostatic transmission is placed in-line with traditional drives (in-line HTS). It is shown here that the PS-HTS can improve the annual energy production of a 250 kW rated power wind turbine of about 10–11% by employing a hydrostatic transmission with one-seventh the size of the one requested by in-line HTS architecture.