As the installed capacity of wind power plants increases, the share of power they provide to the transmission network also increases. This means that during times of grid fault, the way a wind power plant is able to respond with the fault has a significant impact on the stability of transmission grid.
ABB has been developing permanent magnet applications since the mid 90's, for both the wind industry and the very demanding marine industry and the very demanding marine industry. This experience provides the foundation for ABB’s know-how, ensuring the most critical factors for the efficient and long operation of a permanent magnet generator are addressed. This expertise is used for each of the high, medium, and lowspeed generators ABB develops.
For today’s utility scale wind turbines there are two main electrical drivetrain concepts, doubly-fed and full converter. The primary difference in these concepts is the type and size of generator used and the function of the converter. The full converter concepts can be further categorized into three types, low-speed (also known as direct-drive), medium-speed, and high-speed. ABB produces products for all of these concepts.