Performance analysis of radial flux and axial flux permanent magnet generators for low- speed wind turbine applications

Abstract

India has enormous wind potential and average wind velocity is about 6 m/s, whereas the conventional wind turbine mechanism is operated at 7 m/s–12.5 m/s. It is necessary to design low speed wind energy conversion to harvest the electrical energy from wind. Mostly, Radial flux permanent magnet generator (RFPMG) is used for low speed wind turbine applications. This Conventional RFPMG has the drawbacks of low flux density and increase in weight due to large number of poles accommodation. In order to overcome the above setbacks, this paper proposes a double sided coreless axial flux permanent magnet generator (AFPMG) for low speed wind energy conversion applications. The performance analysis of the proposed AFPMG is carried out through finite element method using ANSYS Maxwell software. Finally the performance of RFPMG and AFPMG is compared based on the flux linkage, flux density, induced emf, stator current, moving torque, cogging torque, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), material consumption, losses and efficiency. It is evident from the results that AFPMG gives the better performance than RFPMG in all such aspects.