Between 2009 – 2011, we were spoiled by a “green race” that started as a sprint. There was an urgent need to bring Asian nations—especially China—into line with the rest of the world to use cleaner and more efficient energy sources.
Suddenly in 2012, it’s turned into something of a marathon, with companies and financial institutions involved in the market, which has been slowed by regulatory and political climates that have evolved in the face of new economic realities.
After many wild years in the wind power business, clearer targets are now being set. Most of the players have realized that instead of having the most sophisticated turbine, the more important goals are to reach a levelized cost of energy and higher amount of annual energy produced.
The industry standard has been to use totally enclosed (IP54) generators in the turbines, mainly to avoid the risk of corrosion in its different forms and also to improve the lifetime of the components. Offshore turbines face additional challenges from the sea environment in which the components in both offshore and near-shore turbines are exposed to salt water.
Back in 2008 when The Switch delivered its first inverter for a photovoltaic (PV) solar application, it was built like power converters have been for many decades. Variable speed drives for industrial applications, excitation systems – and more recently, power converters for renewable energy applications such as wind – have always had a logical indoor installation location.
Permanent magnet (PM) technology has some clear benefits also for marine applications. Since fuel prices have gone up by 30% in only 2 years and freight rates have remained at about the same level for the past 10 years, energy savings has become hot topic in shipbuilding.
