Alison Richard, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, has started the university’s first wind turbine, a 20kW turbine fitted with a new type of generator, known as the Brushless Doubly-Fed Induction Generator (BDFIG), which has been the subject of research at Cambridge over the past 10 years.
BDFIG was designed by Richard McMahon and his team at the university’s Engineering Department in collaboration with Durham University and Wind Technologies, a Cambridge University spinout. The technology improves upon the reliability of existing generators, which is an essential requirement for the next generation of offshore turbines.
Following the successful completion of the 20kW project, researchers are currently building a medium-scale 250kW BDFIG, as a stepping stone to a multi-megawatt machine, which will be built and tested next year.
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