Additive manufacturing (AM) has the potential to produce novel high-performance electrical machines, enabling the direct printing of complex shapes and the simultaneous processing of multiple feedstocks in a single build. We examined the properties and functional performance of Fe-3 wt.% Si materials that were printed via selective laser melting, machined down to thin laminates, and stacked to form a stator core of a prototype brushless permanent-magnet electrical motor. Big Area Additive Manufacturing of Nd2Fe14B (NdFeB)–polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) bonded magnets was performed, with them then being magnetized and used for the rotor. The magnetic, mechanical, and electrical properties of the as-printed and various heat-treated thin laminates and the back electromotive force (EMF) of the electrical motors at different rotational speeds were measured. The thin laminates exhibit a maximum relative permeability of 7494 at an applied field of 0.8 Oe and a core loss of about 20 W/lb at 60 Hz with the maximum induction of 15 kg. In addition to the demonstration of AM printing, motor assembly, and complete characterization of printed Fe-3 wt.% Si, this report highlights the areas of improvement needed in printing technologies to achieve AM built electrical motors and the need for isotropic microstructure refinements to make the laminates appropriate for high-mechanical-strength and low-loss rotational electrical devices.

The integration of renewable energy sources into power grids necessitates solutions for grid support and stability during fluctuations in electricity generation and demand. Gravity energy storage systems (GESS) are emerging as a promising technology for managing the balance between energy supply and demand. However, their capacity to optimize energy flow and offer voltage and frequency regulation amid imbalances in generation and demand is less reported. This paper investigates the control of GESS for optimizing energy flow during voltage and frequency regulation. The study evaluates the regulation capabilities of GESS with different motor inertias during a Texas grid event: one with a high-speed, low-inertia motor and another with a low-speed, high-inertia motor. Results indicate that both GESS scenarios provide fast frequency response by converting potential energy into kinetic energy and vice versa, with a response time of 1.5 s from the frequency variation. This aligns with grid requirements for primary frequency response from traditional synchronous generators and motors with large inertia. Furthermore, a GESS based on a high-inertia motor may be able to operate over a broader range of frequency variations, whereas a low-inertia system may be limited by thermal constraints of the motor.

AbstractCurrently, many utility‐scale wind turbine generator original equipment manufacturers are dependent on imported rare earth permanent magnets, which are susceptible to market risks from cost instability. To lower the production costs of these generators and stay competitive in the market, several small wind manufacturers are pursuing continuous improvements to both generator design and manufacturing. However, traditional design and manufacturing methods have yielded marginal improvements in wind power performance. This work presents novel methods to redesign a baseline 15‐kW wind turbine generator with reduced rare‐earth permanent magnets by leveraging cutting‐edge three‐dimensional (3D) printed polymer‐bonded permanent magnets and steel. Symmetric, asymmetric, and multimaterial‐magnet parametrization methods are introduced for shape optimization. We extend the symmetric and asymmetric methods to the back iron in the stator to further investigate the impact and opportunities for performance improvements with lesser active materials. We employ a design‐of‐experiments approach with parametric computer‐aided design for shape generation and evaluate different designs by magneto‐thermal modeling and finite‐element analysis. We use adaptive sampling technique to identify better performing designs with lesser magnet mass, higher efficiency, and lower cogging torque when compared with the baseline generator. Asymmetric pole designs resulted in a magnet mass in the range of 4.77–5.37 kg, which was 27%–35% lighter than the baseline generator, suggesting that a new design freedom exists that can be enabled by advanced manufacturing, such as 3D printing. Shaping the back iron in the stator resulted in material savings in electrical steel of up to 14.62 kg, which was 20% lighter than the baseline stator. We conducted a structural analysis to evaluate an optimized asymmetric rotor design from the point of view of mechanical integrity and air‐gap stiffness. The magnetically optimal shape profile was shown as having a positive impact on the radial stiffness, and an optimal solution was discovered to reduce the structural mass by nearly 30 kg, which was 29% lighter than the baseline.

In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on utilizing energy storage to enhance grid resilience against disruptive events. While renewable energy supply continues to expand, gravity-based solutions like pumped hydro remain dominant in the commercial space. However, their geographical limitations constrain availability, scalability, and increase costs for co-locating solar and wind energy. An alternative approach proposes repurposing idle oil and gas wells located closer to existing grid infrastructure, offering a promising and cost-effective solution. This paper addresses the optimization and control of a regenerative drive system coupled to an interior permanent magnet synchronous machine in a 300-meter well with a 100-Newton weight. The study employs a dynamic MATLAB/Simulink model to simulate the operation of the electric drivetrain system during storage and discharge operations. The results demonstrate an initial round-trip efficiency of 85.9% for the electrical system alone and identify crucial factors for maximizing efficiency. The optimized operation and control of the electromechanical drivetrain system hold great potential for minimizing the levelized cost of storage while maximizing efficiency and revenue generation.

As the offshore wind industry keeps growing at a rapid pace, developers are bracing themselves for a huge demand in critical rare earth metals which will threaten an already vulnerable supply chain. The wind energy industry is addressing this problem by investing in modern generator technologies that employ magnets with reduced rare earth content and high-field magnets enabled by rare-earth-free superconductors. In this paper we introduce the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's newly advanced GeneratorSE 2.0, which is a design and optimization tool that was developed to investigate the feasibility of such modern generators. Two direct-drive generator topologies with different magnet materials and mounting arrangements are investigated: an outer-rotor, V-shaped interior permanent magnet generator, and an inner-rotor normally conducting armature, paired with a low-temperature superconducting field with racetrack coils. These technologies were evaluated for a range of power ratings between 15 and 25 MW, which represent the next generation of offshore wind turbines for both fixed-bottom and floating applications. The analyses indicate a new trend favoring the low-temperature superconducting technology for the direct-drive system.

A vast majority of utility-scale wind turbine generators in the United States depend on foreign-sourced rare-earth permanent magnets that are vulnerable to supply chain uncertainties. Many small wind original equipment manufacturers are motivated to pursue continuous improvements to the generator design to lower the material and production costs and improve performance by lowering cogging torque and increasing efficiency. Traditional design and manufacturing offer limited opportunities. In this work, we demonstrate advanced design approaches for a 15-kW baseline wind turbine generator by making use of recent progress in three-dimensional (3D) printing of polymer-bonded magnets and electrical and structural steel. We explore three methods of magnet parametrization using Bézier curves resulting in symmetric , asymmetric and multimaterial magnet designs. We employ a multiphysics approach combining parametric computer-aided-design modeling, finite-element analysis, and targeted sampling to identify novel designs with more opportunities for reducing rare-earth material, improving efficiency and minimizing cogging torque. The results show that asymmetric-pole design and multimaterial-pole designs offer a greater opportunity to minimize rare-earth magnet materials by up to 35% with similar performance as the baseline generator, suggesting newer opportunities with design freedom beyond traditional limits of symmetry and as allowed by 3D printing.

In this paper, we examine and compare the performance of a generator design optimized using additively manufactured NdFeB–SmFeN in nylon-polymer-bonded permanent magnets (PMs) against a generator design with conventional NdFeB sintered PMs. To realize this, a commercially available 15-kW wind generator's rotor is re-optimized using both additively manufactured and sintered NdFeB magnets using simple geometric parameterization that allowed for two specific magnet shapes, namely, arc-shaped and crown-shaped designs. Results showed that for a similar generator performance, the designs with additively manufactured bonded PMs are more cost-competitive in terms of the estimated PM material cost and also have negligible eddy current magnet losses.

Leading wind turbine manufacturers are racing to build larger and more powerful offshore machines. Drivetrain configurations often use a permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG), in either a direct-drive configuration or coupled to a gearbox. With increasing demand for critical rare-earth magnets, new generator technologies are emerging to ensure a stable and secure supply chain. We evaluate three different topologies of radial flux synchronous generators employing high field magnets with reduced or no rare-earth content: a direct-drive interior PMSG (DD-IPMSG), a geared drivetrain combining a medium speed gearbox with a PMSG (MS-PMSG), and a direct-drive low-temperature superconducting generator (DD-LTSG). We develop a conceptual design module for each of these technologies within a larger framework for full turbine design. This provides the fairest comparison between technologies at nominal power ratings from 15–25 MW, which represent the next generation of offshore wind turbines. The analyses show that if operational expenditures (OpEx) are constant across the technologies, MS-PMSG results in the lowest LCOE with reductions of up to 7% relative to DD-IPMSG. DD-LTSG also yields lower LCOE values by 2%–3% for fixed-bottom turbines and 3%–5% with a floating platform. However, results are sensitive to OpEx assumptions, with a mere 10% increase causing the conclusions to shift.

Minimizing the mass in electric machines while maintaining superior performance is a new requirement for the advancement of drivetrains used in wind energy and electric mobility. Topology optimization (TO) for lightweighting electric machines using traditional approaches typically explores a restricted design space allowed by standard parametrizable geometry and manufacturing, while advanced methods, such as cell-based density approaches, suffer from a lack of robust manufacturability constraints during the optimization process. To overcome these drawbacks, we explore a grid-independent, boundary optimization where the outer shape of the magnet is parameterized using Bézier curves. We conduct a design of experiments (DOE) to study the effect of different magnet shapes on machine performance by varying the control points on the Bézier curves. A machine-learning-based surrogate model is constructed using the data from the DOE to quantify the relationship between the control points, air-gap torque, and mass. The control points are then optimized to maximize the torque density. The approach is used for minimizing electrical steel mass in the International Energy Agency (IEA) 15-MW radial flux direct-drive wind turbine generator. The new approach to shape optimization resulted in smooth and concise shapes that can be easily additively manufactured with up to a 20-ton reduction in electrical steel mass.

Direct-drive wind turbine generators are increasing in popularity, thanks to recent project developments-especially offshore, where reliability and efficiency are major cost drivers. Yet, high capital costs are forcing many original equipment manufacturers to consider lightweight, high-torque density generators for next-generation multi-megawatt turbines that may be difficult to realize by traditional design or manufacturing methods. In this study, we present a new design framework enabled by advanced machine learning and multimaterial additive manufacturing to perform a magnetic topology optimization that maximizes the torque per rotor active mass for a 15-megawatt direct-drive permanent magnet wind generator. A comparison of the proposed approach against conventional topology optimization demonstrated a significant increase in computational efficiency and accuracy in performance predictions. Results using single and multimaterial compositions for rotor core and magnets identify a wider choice of 3D printable designs for a given specification. A hybrid combination of sintered and dysprosium-free polymer-bonded magnets shows good potential for torque performance by saving material costs up to 8.75%. More than 30% improvement in rotor torque densities is identified which can marginally improve the overall generator torque density. With the rapid evolution of multipowder deposition technolgies, this study can greatly inspire a new paradigm for design-driven manufacturing with novel material compositions and lightweight, low-cost, high-strength multimaterial geometries that were previously unexplored for direct-drive generators.

With growing interest in electrification from clean energy technologies, such as wind power and use of pure electric powertrains in various applications, the demand for next-generation, high-performance magnetic materials has risen significantly. Electrical machine design for these applications is facing challenges in terms of meeting very demanding metrics for power densities and conversion efficiencies, thereby motivating the exploration of advanced materials and manufacturing for the next generation of lightweight ultraefficient electric machines. Additive manufacturing (AM), a layer-by-layer three dimensional (3D) printing technology, opens up new venues of improvements for industrial manufacturing of electrical machines via near-net shape printing of complex geometries, reduction of parts count and production lead time, and conservation of expensive critical materials such as rare-earth magnets as well as nanocrystalline and amorphous soft magnetic composites, allowing their use in only critical regions required by desired properties of the printed parts. The magnetic, electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the magnetic materials are also greatly influenced by the selection of the AM method. Among the seven major American Standard Testing and Materials-defined standard modes of 3D printing, selective laser melting, fused deposition modeling, and binder jetting technology dominate the AM processing of soft magnetic materials and their integration in electrical machines. In this work, the state of the art in printability and performance characteristics of soft magnetic materials for electric machines is summarized and discussed. The prospects of soft magnetic materials selection in terms of price, printability, weight, and performance of the electrical machines are also discussed. This review highlights the current status of AM of large electrical machines, AM process selection guidelines, hybrid printing technologies, and the associated opportunities and challenges. An emphasis is put on multimaterial processing that is essential for electrical machines. Hybrid printing technologies that combine multiple AM processes with adequate automation and enable simultaneous multimaterials dispensing, real-time quality control, postprocessing, and surface finish with integrated subtractive computer numeric control machining are the requirements for progressing toward the end-user electrical machines. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

This report describes a 15-megawatt offshore wind turbine with a fixed-bottom monopile support structure. This reference wind turbine is a Class IB direct-drive machine, with a rotor diameter of 240 meters and a hub height of 150 meters. An overview of the design is presented in Figure ES-1 and Table ES-1. The design reflects a joint effort between the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Technical University of Denmark, sponsored by the European Union's H2020 Program, through the second work package of International Energy Agency Wind Task 37 on Wind Energy Systems Engineering: Integrated RD&D. A forthcoming report will detail a semisubmersible floating support structure developed by the University of Maine.

Li et al. present a worldwide analysis of rare-earth elements used in wind turbine generators. It focuses on the most extreme deployment scenario using rare-earth-intensive generator technology to demonstrate demand quickly outpacing supply, thus suggesting an existential threat to rapid wind deployment. However, alternative generator technologies exist or are in development that significantly reduce or almost eliminate the need for rare-earth elements.

This report describes two wind turbine models developed within the second work package (WP2) of IEA Wind Task 37 on Wind Energy Systems Engineering: Integrated RD&D. The wind turbine models aim at acting as references for future research projects on wind energy, representing a modern land-based wind turbine and a next generation offshore wind turbine. The land-based design is a class IIIA geared configuration with a rated electrical power of 3.4-megawatts, a rotor diameter of 130 meters (m), and a hub height of 110 m. The offshore design is a class IA configuration with a rated electrical power of 10.0 megawatts, a rotor diameter of 198 m, and a hub height of 119 m. The offshore turbine adopts a direct-drive generator.

Proper wind turbine design relies on the ability to accurately predict ultimate and fatigue loads of turbines. The load analysis process requires precise knowledge of the expected wind-inflow conditions as well as turbine structural and aerodynamic properties. However, uncertainty in most parameters is inevitable. It is therefore important to understand the impact such uncertainties have on the resulting loads. The goal of this work is to assess which input parameters have the greatest influence on turbine power, fatigue loads, and ultimate loads during normal turbine operation. An elementary effects sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the most sensitive parameters. Separate case studies are performed on (1) wind-inflow conditions and (2) turbine structural and aerodynamic properties, both cases using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5 MW baseline wind turbine. The Veers model was used to generate synthetic International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Kaimal turbulence spectrum inflow. The focus is on individual parameter sensitivity, though interactions between parameters are considered. The results of this work show that for wind-inflow conditions, turbulence in the primary wind direction and shear are the most sensitive parameters for turbine loads, which is expected. Secondary parameters of importance are identified as veer, u-direction integral length, and u components of the IEC coherence model, as well as the exponent. For the turbine properties, the most sensitive parameters are yaw misalignment and outboard lift coefficient distribution; secondary parameters of importance are inboard lift distribution, blade-twist distribution, and blade mass imbalance. This information can be used to help establish uncertainty bars around the predictions of engineering models during validation efforts, and provide insight to probabilistic design methods and sitesuitability analyses.