MHI tests new wind turbine system
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) has commenced testing of its large-scale hydraulic drive train wind power generation system at its Yokohama Dockyard & Machinery Works.
The test operation is a part of the project launched in September last year to develop a hydraulic drive train system for offshore wind turbines, supported by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
MHI says that this testing represents a world’s first for operation of a large-scale hydraulic drive train type wind power generation system applying MHI’s Digital Displacement Transmission technology.
Using the test results, MHI will accelerate its development of an offshore wind power generation system in the 7-megawatt (MW) class, with installation and operation slated to begin at Hunterston, in the UK, this year. A mass-produced commercial model will be targeted for market launch in 2015.
The system, recently inaugurated in Yokohama, is based on an existing MWT100 gear-driven wind power generation system that was retrofitted with the new hydraulic drive train.
MHI developed the new hydraulic drive train, with support from NEDO, based on the superior digitally controlled hydraulic technologies of Artemis Intelligent Power Ltd in the UK, which was acquired by MHI in 2010.
MHI is developing the new type system in order to respond to the schedules of the two projects: the operation of onshore demonstration unit in the UK and an offshore floating wind farm project in Fukushima, Japan. The new installations should begin trial operations in June 2013 and August 2014, respectively.
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