Torque Reform: Huge Rare-Earth Magnet Motor Will Simulate Sea Gales at Wind Turbine Test Bed

GE engineers have designed a new monster motor for testing wind turbines capable of generating extreme torques produced by gale force winds and nasty offshore storms. “It’s basically a huge wind turbine in reverse,” says Franz Hubl, global business leader for test systems at GE Power Conversion. “It generates torque instead of electricity. We can put a lifetime of stress on a wind turbine prototype in just 200 days.”

New test bed can exert a lifetime of stress on a wind turbine prototype in just 200 days.

At the heart of the motor is a huge permanent magnet made from an alloy of rare-earth elements. It can generate 20,000 horsepower (the equivalent of 150 cars) and drive the shaft at 10 to 20 rotations per minute. That’s double what a large wind turbine can typically experience on a breezy day. The motor is so large, 26 feet in diameter and 330 tons, that it had to be assembled on site.

It will power a brand new wind turbine test bed at the National Renewable Energy Center (NAREC) in Blyth, UK. The motor will work in combination with a sophisticated testing system manufactured by the American firm MTS. The MTS hydraulics and mechanical system attaches to the front of the wind turbine like a giant three-prong steel mandible that distributes the torque unevenly in simulation of extreme conditions. “We can expose the turbines to as much as twice the overload,” Hubl says. “When you have a turbine that’s 150 meters in diameter, a sudden gale can apply tremendous asymmetrical load on the bearings at the center of the turbine. The wind speed at the top of the blades will be higher than at the bottom. Now we can simulate those conditions.”

The assembly can test an entire nacelle, the large grey box sitting atop of the wind turbine tower and housing the electricity generation system.

The system will replace older technology using standard electrical motors. Those motors were spinning at 1,500 rpm and engineers had to slow them down to wind speed rotation with elaborate gearboxes.

Brains for Cranes: GE Tech Gives Lift to Giant Shipyard Cranes

The Goliath gantry crane at China’s Dalian shipyard is so large that the old Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands would fit snugly within its 4,000-ton frame. But unlike its biblical namesake, this behemoth, which is 650 feet wide and 320 feet high, is no pushover.

The crane’s two trolleys riding along the cross beam, or gantry, will soon start using a laser-guided “anti-collision” system developed by GE Power Conversion. The system will allow Dalian to precisely monitor the trolleys’ position, let them scoot along the gantry simultaneously, and improve crane efficiency. Advanced GE electrical drives inside the trolleys will convert gravitational energy into electricity when lowering heavy loads and feed it back into the system. Sophisticated power management technology will distribute the power to motors and gears lifting loads to save electricity. “Few people know that GE builds brains for big cranes,” says Lutz Steinhaus, global sales and engineering application leader at GE Power Conversion.

Need a Lift?: “Few people know that GE builds brains for big cranes,” says GE Power Conversion's Lutz Steinhaus

Dalian will be using the crane to build next generation LNG tankers and container vessels. “Working together with GE helps us continually push the boundaries of shipbuilding,” says Gao Guo Chun, project manager at Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

Steinhaus says that the innovative drives can regenerate 80 percent of the energy required to lower a load and make it available for lifting. “We’ve developed an energy balancing system that allows the operator to use as little power as possible,” he says. “One trolley lowering a load can provide power to the other.”

GE engineers also built in an active energy management system that allows the operator to keep track of all the crane’s functions and data through simplified status, diagnostics and fault detection.

Similar GE systems are already powering 20 other cranes around the world, including three at Dalian.

Re-Joyce: GE to Launch Breakthrough Pump Jet for Offshore Vessels

Ever since Ulysses plunged his oar in the wine-dark Aegean Sea, mariners have been looking for an efficient way to move a ship. Greek galleys anticipated Robert Fulton’s paddle wheel, which was put out of business by the screw propeller. But GE engineers now built and patented a new machine that attaches to the bottom of a ship like a jet engine to an aircraft wing, and looks like one too. The device, called the Inovelis pump jet, can swivel 360 degrees around its axis and push the ship in any direction without a rudder.

That’s Epic: Ships using GE pump jets will supply Petrobras oil and gas platforms located 180 miles off the coast of Brazil.

“We took the motor and put it in an external pod so it’s now in the water,” says Paul English, marine leader at GE Power Conversion. “Like a jet engine, it has fixed stator vanes inside a nozzle. The vanes straighten the water flow and guide it across the impeller blades. The blades get good water to attack and throw out the back. The result is a more efficient engine with better thrust.”

English says traditional screw propellers produce drag by “spilling” water around the screw tips to the front of the propeller. “When you look over the aft end of a ferry, you see a lot of churning water,” English says. “That’s basically wasted energy. Instead of pushing the water backwards, which is ideal, you are wasting energy on making it roll.” The stator and impeller, a fancy propeller enclosed in a nozzle, greatly reduce the churn.

The pod design also eliminates complicated transmission gears, cuts maintenance, and improves efficiency. “The shaft comes out the back end of the pod and straight into the impeller,” English says. “There are no gearbox [energy] losses at all. We’ve got rid of it.”

The pump jet was originally used in submarines, jet skis and high-speed surface vessels. But GE adapted the technology so that it can now power large supply ships.

GE workers are already making 17 pump jets for eight offshore platform supply vessels, including four ships that will supply deep sea oil and gas platforms operated by Petrobras and located some 180 miles of the coast of Brazil.

The new pods were designed for maximum speed of 16 knots, the oil and gas industry standard. They will work in combination with GE’s data-driven dynamic positioning system, which can keep ships virtually stationary on high seas without an anchor. “The ship algorithms gather location, water current speed and other data, and the computer calculates what thrusts it needs and its direction," English says. "The pods can turn around the vertical axis and hold the ship at a particular angle. You don’t need a rudder.”

If only Ulysses had a pump jet. He could set his ship on autopilot, his crew could skip the wax earplugs, and they could all enjoy the Siren song together.

Keep Calm and Carry On: Data Driven GE Motors to Steer High-Tech Drillship through North Sea Storms

Days after the Queen Mary 2 left Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage to New York in April 2004, the world’s fastest and longest passenger ship hit a wall of fierce North Atlantic storms. Waves “as tall as a 20-story building” slammed against the upper decks and left ocean liner “bobbing through seas so rough that cabin doors slammed and drinks were flung from the well-polished bars,” according to The New York Times.

The Queen Mary 2 carried on through the bad weather, not unusual for this patch of the ocean, propelled, in part, by a pair of GE gas turbines and electrical motors. It arrived safely in New York just one day behind schedule.

Now a sister marine technology to the QM2 motors will labor in the same frigid waters. It will power a rugged, semi-submersible “ultra deep-water” drilling platform called the West Mira bound for North Sea swells off the coast Greenland and Canada.

Full Fathom Five: GE’s marine propulsion technology will help hold the West Mira deep sea drilling rig steady in frigid North Atlantic swells.

Like the QM2, the West Mira will be a record-breaking vessel. The deep water drilling company Seadrill, which ordered the rig, says the West Mira will be one of the most technically accomplished semi-submersible platforms in the world. It will be capable of drilling wells 40,000 feet deep beneath 10,000 feet of water.

Engineers from GE Power Conversion designed a system of connected power generators, drives, and propulsion systems that will listen to data from the rig’s electronic brain and positioning system, and hold the West Mira steady and on target.

Similar GE technology will also serve on a fleet of 22 new Petrobras drillships and rigs that will drill wells as deep as 7,000 feet below the sea 180 miles off the coast of Brazil. Those vessels will come with a crack GE “dynamic positioning system,” or DP, that can keep them within a 15-foot radius on the swells.

The DP applies sophisticated mathematical modeling software that blends location information with wind speed and ocean current data. The DP brain then calculates commands for a system of “intelligent” thrusters, propeller motors, electricity generators and other equipment similar to the West Mira gear that help keep the vessels in the right place.

“When you are drilling, you need to stay where you are,” says Paul English, marine vertical leader at GE’s Power Conversion business. “Coming off the wellhead because you’ve lost position could be a very expensive and very risky process.”

Resistance is Futile: GE Tests Breakthrough High-Temperature Superconducting Power Plant Technology

A century ago, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes cooled a ring made from mercury near the absolute zero [at 0 Kelvin (minus 459 F) the coldest possible temperature], sent through electrical current and removed the battery. One year later, the current was still flowing. The experiment helped Kamerlingh Onnes discover superconductivity, a physical phenomenon that drops electrical resistance to zero in extremely cold metals. It also helped him win the Nobel Prize.

Electrical resistance is why light bulbs, batteries and wires get hot. That heat, though, is waste. If our appliances and power plants were superconductive, they would become hugely more efficient, allowing us to use the same electricity over and over again.

The heat is on: GE engineers test high-temperature superconducting power generator.

But superconductive machines remain elusive. A century after Kamerlingh Onnes’ discovery, scientists are still struggling to make superconductivity work at balmier temperatures.

Last week, however, researchers at GE Power Conversion turned on the heat. The tested a new superconducting generator called Hydrogenie. The GE team replaced copper wires wound on the rotor inside the generator with a metal base covered with a superconducting ceramic layer. They made the machine work at 43 Kelvin (minus 383 F) and produce 1.7 megawatts of electricity.

Minus 383 F is still quite frigid, but for superconductivity researchers it’s like a trip to the tropics. They call the new technology “high temperature superconductors” for good reason. Until recently, superconductivity still shivered near 4 Kelvin, where Kamerlingh Onnes’ experiments left it. “This technology is a true breakthrough,”says Martin Ingles, GE Power Conversion manager for Hydrogenie. Ingles says that Hydrogenie could “radically improve” the efficiency of wind and water turbines, ocean ship propulsion, and other technology.

Because the ceramic and metal windings have virtually no resistance, their cross section could be as small as 2 percent of the copper wires used inside motors today. This could bring a new age of small, light, and extremely powerful motors and generators.

The GE researchers had to crack hard technical problems to design the new system. “It’s rather like trying to keep ice cubes frozen on a rotisserie in a very hot oven,” Ingles says. To keep the system cold, they pipe frigid helium gas into the machine rotor and then send it around the individual coils. Although they placed the rotor inside a vacuum for better insulation, it still has some direct contact, via its shaft, with the outside world. The temperature difference problem along the shaft – scientists call it temperature gradient - is a big problem. Imagine plunging your teeth into a scoop of ice cream, except hundreds of degrees colder.

But the GE team developed a patented method for dealing with the gradient and transferring torque from the cold coils to the rotor. They also designed “low resistance thermal joints and assemblies” that minimize the cooling power required to cool the coils.

GE says that “the machine demonstrates all of the technologies required” to make high-temperature semiconducting machines “a commercial reality.”

Electricity has never been this cool.

Superman, Meet Top Gun: How GE Evolved Roller Coaster Tech to Launch Jets from Ships

When the Superman: Escape from Krypton roller coaster opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia, California, in 1997, it was the tallest ride in the world and one of the fastest. The coaster can shoot a 6-ton car carrying 15 people up a vertical tower 415 feet tall at 100 miles per hour. The Escape was the first ride in the world powered by an electric linear motor system, developed by engineers at GE’s Power Conversion business.

The engineers have now tested the latest version of the technology. Instead of fun ride cars, it can power an electric catapult that could fling fighter jets weighing as much as 37 tons (like a fully loaded F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) off the deck of an aircraft carrier at takeoff speed. The catapult can quickly accelerate to speeds in excess of 186 miles per hour and generate gravitational forces of 3.3g. For shorter launches the technology can reach as much as 12g. “In terms of force, this is probably the most powerful linear motor ever built,” says Mark Dannatt, director of naval business at GE Power Conversion.

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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/superman.gif"]
It's Bird, It's a Plane: The technology behind the new catapult started like a motor for Superman fun ride.
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A GE Power Conversion's catapult at the Bruntingthorpe test site in Leicestershire, England.
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The new electromagnetic catapult could replace steam catapults still used by even the latest American aircraft carriers. Steam-powered launch has a number of drawbacks. “It’s basically a tube with a piston inside,” Dannatt says. “You get a tremendous jolt at the start of the launch when you open the valve and let the steam out at full pressure. This does not do the aircraft or the pilot any good.” Worse, as the jet goes down the track, the steam leaks out and the pressure gradually dies away. “It’s a bit like a balloon going down,” Dannatt says.

But the electromagnetic catapult, the technical name for the technology is medium-voltage advanced linear induction machine, starts slow like a theme park ride and attains maximum speed at launch. “This is what you want,” Dannatt says. “The wear on the airframe is less.”

Access to power is not a problem. Many ships are switching to electric propulsion (Dannatt’s business has built power and propulsion systems for the UK’s aircraft carriers as well as the U.S. Navy’ first hybrid and all electric vessels). The new catapult could easily tap into that electricity.

The effect on the ship would be negligible, even though the catapult is providing most of the energy during the plane launch. (The jet's engines contribute only a small amount.) “Although the amount of launch energy you need is high, the power that you need to charge the catapult is very small compared to the propulsion system,” Dannatt says.

The new catapult is essentially a common rotary induction motor that GE engineers cut open. They arranged the motor's internal coils along a track several meters long. An automatic control system jogs electricity forward through the coils, and generates a moving electromagnetic field. A heavy steel the plate rides on the field along the track, kind of like a maglev train, and pulls the jet during takeoff. “There is an air gap between the plate and the track,” Dannatt says. “There are no bits wearing down. It’s much better for maintenance.”

Besides aircraft carriers and roller coasters, the technology could also power car parts, cars, and other vehicles during acceleration crash tests. It could also launch large unmanned aircraft from locations that were previously not feasible. Says Dannatt: “It’s a solution looking for a problem.”