Thermal Analysis and Design of the Cryogenic System for 12 MW Offshore Superconducting Wind Turbine

Applied superconductivity technology has been thought of being utilized in manufacturing large capacity wind turbines for several years. It is regarded as the only way to minify the volume and mass for large electric motors. Cryogenic system for the generator is fatally important, to create the necessary low temperature maintaining field windings superconducting state. Aiming at designing a reliable cryogenic system for large capacity as 12 MW superconducting generators field winding, in this paper, thermal numerical calculation and analysis for the superconducting coil with cold shield with multilayer insulation (MLI) are done, a dynamic model is established with finite element method (FEM) to verify the previous analysis. Optimization is also done to reduce the thermal loss. Proposal for the numbers of Cryocoolers needed and their layout in generator are given.