Work on the seventh wind farm in Cyprus underway

The wind farm will contain 21 Vensys-v-82 type wind turbines with a capability of 1.5 megawatts each, with overall production expected to reach 11, 293 megawatt-hours per year. The contract will be effective for 20 years whereby the wind farm will generate revenue by selling energy to the electricity authority. It will also be financed by the Special Fund for Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Saving.

Only one wind farm, at Orites Paphos, is fully operational, all the others are still being built. There are currently wind farms under construction in areas such as Ayia Anna, Koshi and Psevda among others.

According to Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides, the project is part of a grants scheme to encourage the production of electricity through wind farms, photovoltaic systems and biomass.

VENSYS wind turbines don’t need expensive gearboxes that are highly susceptible to wear, and are based on the generator concept of a synchronous machine with permanent magnet excitation. The rotating speed of the rotor is transferred directly to the multipolar generator – without any intermediate gearboxes.

The permanent magnets are mounted to the outer shell of the rotor and are cooled by the outside air. When compared to DC excitation, the saved excitation power is fully available as an additional energy yield. This is especially advantageous when working at partial load and helps to reduce the heat in the generator. Slip rings are also no longer needed to transfer the excitation power, meaning another wear part is saved.

On the VENSYS 1.5 MW platform, the generator is cooled by the outside air. In doing this, the winding is only exposed to minimal amounts of outside air. The VENSYS frequency converter is also air-cooled. The variable-speed generator operation with downstream frequency converter significantly reduces stresses, and makes the VENSYS wind turbine resistant to torque peaks and wind gusts.

In the VENSYS 2.5 MW platform, the cooling system is a closed circuit which dissipates heat into the surrounding environment through a heat exchanger. The full enclosure protects the winding and the interior of the generator from external influences, such as salty and humid air. At the same time, no coolants or oils are needed. This is because the cooling system has one primary goal – to work correctly (whilst being simple in design and robust).

The fully enclosed, permanent magnet excited high-performance generator means that the technology implemented successfully on gearless turbines on land can be used offshore for the first time – with the VENSYS 2.5 MW platform. Thanks to its compact design, the tower head mass of 132 t is remarkably low for a multi-megawatt turbine.

www.vensys.de/energy/

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