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HybridDrive for wind turbine drive trains future – Winergy shines on Global Offshore Summit

From July 7 – 9,2021, the Sixth Global Offshore Summit jointly organized by GWEC,
CREIA, CWEA was organized in the beautiful gulf city Guangxi Nanning.

The theme of the conference is "Deepening Innovation, Multifunctional Integration -- Achieving Carbon Neutral Goals for Offshore Wind Power". Dr. Gou Jianhui, Chairman and CEO of Flender China, was together with Mr. Joerg Sieber, General Manager of Wind Gears, and Mr. Andreas Nagel, General Manager of Wind Generators, and their team, invited to attend the conference, the dialogue and keynote speech.

China is rich in offshore wind power resources, "carbon peak.carbon neutral" has become a national
strategic goal, offshore wind power will occupy an important strategic position in the next new energy reform. At the same time, China's offshore wind power will fully enter the parity era in 2022. How to maintain a stable and healthy development of offshore wind power by reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become an important focus of this year's Global Offshore Wind Power Conference.

During the dialogue session, Qin Haiyan, Secretary General of CWEA, invited Dr. Gou Jianhui to share how technological innovation can help reduce the cost of offshore wind power. Dr. Gou happily answered that the cost reduction of offshore wind power has become an inevitable trend, among which technological innovation will play the most important role in addition to the innovation of various business models. As one of the world's leading drive chain experts, Winergy has been leading the technical innovation in drive train systems.

Firstly, Winergy improve the power density and torque density of the drive train & gearbox. Over the past few years, we've seen gearbox torque density increase by about 4 to 5 percent per year. At present, our latest design gearbox torque density can reach 200Nm/kg. For the same shape and size, our gearboxes are lighter, which is particularly important for offshore turbines, as each extra kilogram has an impact on both direct and indirect costs.

Secondly, the application of new technology in gearboxes and generators. In order to improve the torque density of the gearbox, the gearbox structure was developed from a first planet to a two planet to the current three planet technology. From three planets to four planets, there are now five, seven, eight, and more. Other applications such as outerless bearings, especially journal bearings, further lead to a more compact and lighter gearbox design. In addition, the unique oil cooling technology, ultra-compact construction and lightweight design of the generator can reduce the size of the generator by 20 to 30 percent.

Thirdly, the wind turbine drive system is highly integrated. After years of continuous development, the HybridDrive technology has been adopted by more and more wind turbine manufacturers at home and abroad by virtue of its reliability, efficiency, compact and other characteristics. Especially in the development of wind turbines toward the direction of large-scale, its advantages are increasingly prominent, and it is expected to become one of the mainstream technologies of wind turbine drive system in the future.

On the Offshore Wind Power Innovation Forum on the second day of the conference, Joerg Sieber, General Manager of Winergy China Gearbox, and Andreas Nagel, General Manager of Winergy China Generators, presented the topic "The Application of HybridDrive of Wind Power in Offshore Wind Power", which attracted great attention from colleagues in the industry.

Joerg Sieber introduced that since the development of the first gearbox for wind turbines in 1981 and the delivery of the first gearbox for wind turbines in 1983, Winergy has supplied more than 50.000 generators and 175GW of gearboxes worldwide, with plants, service and technical centers around the world. Winergy has been committed to the development of offshore wind power worldwide since 1991, when we delivered 11units of 450kW gearboxes for the world's first offshore wind farm (Vindeby in Denmark). In addition, as the most successful drive train manufacturer in China's offshore wind market, Winergy has delivered 4.8GW gearbox and 1.7GW direct drive stator blocks respectively for the offshore wind market in China by the end of 2020.

Next, Andreas Nagel makes a brief introduction and comparison of the three kinds of wind drive technologies on the market: high-speed, direct drive and Hybriddrive. He pointed out that the three transmission technologies have their own advantages, but the Hybriddrive integrated the advantages of high-speed gear technology and direct drive technology, as far as possible to avoid their shortcomings, it should have a broader space in the future of large megawatt wind application.

Joerg Sieber furtherly shared how can Winergy improve the power density of the drivetrain in the shape of a "V-funnel" : First of all, how to improve the power density layer by layer from the perspective of wind turbine transmission system, gearbox, parts. Then raw materials is tested and verified by various tests of raw materials, gear parts and other parts, prototype tests of gearbox and wind field tests.

They gave a detailed introduction to the unique oil cooling technology of Winergy Generator and pointed out that this technology has been widely used in other applications such as water pumps, and its unique external cooling design ensures ultra-high reliability, ultra-long winding design life and ultra-compact structure design. Winergy's oil-cooled generator ensures that the power density is much higher than that of a conventional cooling method.

Winergy is the most experienced supplier of HybridDrive system for wind turbines in the world, and has been supplying HybridDrive system in small batch since 2013 and successfully developed the world's largest HybridDrive system of 8 MW in 2016. At present, we are actively cooperating with the major OEMs all over the world to develop the latest wind turbine drive system. In the end, he said confidently that Winergy will be the most reliable partner for the development of the next generation of HybridDrive system.