GLOBAL WIND ENERGY WITHIN THE MEGAWATT RANGE

Despite of the political and economic problems wind power continues its steady development, the main directions of which are presented in the paper. New production facilities and materials are being created, which contributes to increased efficiency by enlarging the unit capacity of wind power plants (wind turbines) and reducing the unit cost of energy production. A promising large-scale direction of modern wind power is offshore wind power plants operating on the offshore shelf, for which the production of 6–8 MW wind generators is developed. Many offshore wind turbines manufacturers prefer a direct-drive permanent magnets synchronous generator, while they managed to achieve 25 kg/kN·m for the torque to the mass ratio and are searching how to reduce wind plants cost by various ways. The most significant achievements in the industrial wind turbines production and wind plants construction, as well as promising projects providing non-standard solutions, including those based on superconductivity, are presented.