Advanced Gearless Drivetrain - Phase I Technical Report

Boulder Wind Power (“BWP”) collaborated with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, to demonstrate the economics of scaling an advanced gearless drivetrain technology to 6MW (and larger) turbine applications. The project goal was to show that this advanced drivetrain technology enables a cost of energy of less than $0.10/kWH in offshore applications. This drivetrain technology achieves this Cost of Energy (“COE”) advantage via a 70% greater torque density versus current state-of-the-art drivetrain technologies. In addition, a new dynamically compliant design strategy is required to optimize turbine system-level COE. The BWP generator is uniquely suited for this new design strategy. This project developed a concept design for a 6MW drivetrain and culminated in a plan for a system-level test of this technology at 3MW scale. The project further demonstrated the advantage of the BWP drivetrain with increasing power ratings, with conceptual designs through 10 MW