Wind Technologies Limited – Study, assessment and proof of market potentials and economics of a new electricity harvesting technology for powering rotor instrumentation in variable speed drives

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The UK's electricity consumption could be reduced by 1.6 TWh annually, equivalent to £160million, if the average efficiency of industrial inverter-fed motors, also known as variablespeed drives (VSDs), is increased by 1%. One way of achieving this, and also several otherbenefits such as extended lifetime, lower maintenance cost and higher reliability, is throughreal-time measurement and monitoring of rotor performance.However, powering the instrumentation and wireless data transmission system installed on therotating shaft by batteries is not practical in most applications where the motor is required torun continuously for long intervals. In addition, batteries are expensive and bulky, and cancause significant reliability issues. These have prevented the adoption of rotor measurementsin industrial VSDs where it can bring substantial efficiency and cost benefits.Wind Technologies has developed a patented energy harvesting technique, MAGtronics thatextracts DC electricity from the leakage magnetic flux of rotor end-windings. MAGtronics,demonstrated on laboratory prototypes, can supply sufficient power for the instrumentationelectronics on the rotor.This project aims to study, assess and quantify the economics and market potential ofMAGtronics technology for industrial VSD applications.