This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2017.2669138, IEEE
Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
> 3LPo2G-11 < 1

A New High Temperature Superconducting Vernier

Permanent-Magnet Machine for Wind Turbines
Wenlong Li, Senior Member, IEEE, T.W. Ching, Senior Member, IEEE, and K.T. Chau, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA vernier permanent magnet (VPM) machine using
high temperature superconducting (HTS) winding for dual
excitation is proposed for wind power generation. The proposed
VPM machine adopts the parallel hybrid excitation configuration,
the stator consists of an identical tooth pair connected together by
the stator yoke and the rotor contains two sets of consequent-pole
permanent magnets joined together by the rotor yoke. The
armature winding is located at the stator main slots while the field
winding using HTS coils is wound on the stator yoke. With the
benefit of the HTS field winding, the air-gap flux can be flexibly
adjusted by controlling the magnitude of the dc current.
Therefore, the machine performance is improved to cope with
different operating conditions.
Index TermsHigh temperature superconducting, hybrid
excitation vernier machine, permanent magnet, wind power
generation.
I. INTRODUCTION
magnetic air gap is much larger than that of the conventional
machines, resulting in a large usage of superconducting wires,
hence increasing the initial cost. Thus, the iron-cored HTS
machine is also an alternative for the reduction of HTS wires.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a HTS hybrid
excitation vernier machine for direct-drive wind power
generation by incorporating the HTS field winding into the
HEM. The proposed machine inherently possesses both the
merits of the HEMs and the HTS machines. The proposed
machine can be regarded as two independent machines, namely
VPM machine and HTS excitation vernier machine. Since their
flux paths are parallel, so the accidental demagnetization of
PMs caused by HTS field winding can be avoided. The
proposed machine adopts an outer rotor design which can be
directly coupled to the wind turbine. The stator houses both the
copper armature and the HTS field windings. The proposed
machine adopts the iron-cored design for reducing the usage of
HTS materials.

V ERNIER PERMANENT-MAGNET (VPM) machines exhibit

low-speed and high-torque density and attracts more and Rotor
HTS field
more attentions for direct-drive wind power generation. winding
Although permanent magnet (PM) excitation is uncontrollable, Stator
the air-gap flux control can either be achieved by using tooth
armature d-axis current control or advanced conduction angle
control, both involves complicated control algorithms and
Stator
expensive control hardware. In order to solve this issue, the yoke
hybrid-excitation machines (HEMs) are proposed which use
Armature Iron
electrically-excited field winding in the presence of PMs to winding poles
realize the flux control [1]. Therefore, the flux control (a)
capability can be improved and the control complexity can be Armature
reduced. Rotor
winding
Stator
In recent years, high temperature superconducting (HTS) yoke
machines are becoming more and more attractive for direct-
drive wind power generation [2-6]. Due to the strong magnetic
field provided by the HTS winding, the size and weight of the HTS field
Iron winding
HTS machine can be significantly reduced, hence improving poles
the power density and torque density. It was reported that the
weight of the HTS machines can be greatly reduced as Seg.2

compared with that of the conventional machines when the Stator

Seg.1
tooth
torque requirements is greater than 3 MNm [7]. Although the
(b)
air-cored HTS machine has a lighter weight, the equivalent Fig. 1. Proposed HTS-VPM machine. (a) Side view. (b) Cross-sectional view.

Automatically generated dates of receipt and acceptance will be placed here;

authors do not produce these dates. This work was supported in part by a grant
(Project No. MYRG2015-00218-FST) from Research Council of the University
of Macau, Macao Special Administrative Region, China, a grant (Grant No.
51607114) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, China, and
a grant (Grant No.2016M600673) from China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation, China.
Wenlong Li and T.W. Ching are with Faculty of Science and Technology,
University of Macau, Macao, China, phone: +853-8822-4352; fax: +853-8822-
2426; e-mail: wlli@eee.hku.hk; twching@ieee.org.
K.T. Chau is with Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, e-mail: ktchau@eee.hku.hk.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2017.2669138, IEEE
Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
> 3LPo2G-11 < 2

II. MACHINE DESIGN winding are connected to the supercooled tank and the recycling
Dewar, respectively. The liquid nitrogen flows in the direction
A. Machine Configuration
of the arrow as shown in Fig. 2(c). The temperature of the liquid
Fig. 1 depicts the proposed machine which adopts an inner- nitrogen in the supercooled tank is regulated around 63 K by
stator and outer-rotor topology. As show in Fig. 1(b), the controlling the vacuum level. The vaporizer is used to protect
proposed machine consists of two similar segments, namely the vacuum pump when the supercooled tank is vacuumed.
Seg.1 and Seg.2 which are connected together by the stator
yoke and the rotor yoke. Each segment has an identical stator Outer Dewar Outer Inner
teeth and a consequent-pole PM array which are interleaved by Inner Dewar
Dewar Dewar

iron poles. The PMs for each segment are magnetized in the

55 m

mm
same direction. The PMs for two segments has an offset of a 70

m
mm

50
pole-pitch in the periphery direction. Both the copper armature 75 m
m

and the HTS field excitation windings are wound on the stator.

m
65 m
60 m
By using PMs and iron poles, two main flux paths are achieved.

m
The two flux paths shares the same stator teeth, stator yoke and Vacuum
Liquid HTS field
the rotor yoke. The difference is that the PM flux flows through Liquid nitrogen
Vacuum
nitrogen winding
the PMs and the field flux flows through the iron poles. 3-D view Cross-sectional view
Therefore, the PMs are immune to the demagnetizing effect of (a)
the HTS field winding. PM Outer rotor
Recently, several HTS materials are applied in HTS Iron
pole
machines. The magnesium diboride (MgB 2) is a metallic
superconductor which has a simple manufacturing process and Inner
stator
a low cost [5, 8]. Due to the multifilament structure, MgB2 is
EM shield
generally applied for the armature winding design, therefore,
the AC loss can greatly be suppressed. The 1G superconducting HTS field
winding
material Bi-2233 and 2G material YBCO are also common for
superconducting machines [9, 10]. YBCO has a better
Stator
performance and more cost-effective than that of Bi-2233. yoke Vacuum
Unlike the conventional copper wire, the HTS tape has a critical
Armature Cryogenic
bending diameter. The typical bending diameters for YBCO liquid
winding
and Bi-2233 are 25-35 mm and 50-70 mm, respectively [11].
Based on these considerations, the YBCO HTS tape is applied (b)
to build the HTS field winding in the proposed machine. The Vaporizer
Vacuum
working temperature is 65 K and the excitation current is 100 pump
A/turn.
The HTS field winding has a toroidal shape which is wound
on the inner stator yoke. The key parameters of the HTS
winding are tabulated in Table I. A single loop-shaped Dewar Supply Supercooled M Recycling
Dewar tank Dewar
is applied for keeping the HTS winding at cryogenic Proposed HTS
temperature. The Dewar is mounted to the outer surface of the machine
stator yoke, as shown in Fig. 2. (c)
Fig. 2(a) shows the cryostat and its dimensions for the HTS Fig. 2. Cooling system design. (a) The cryostat. (b) Machine cross-sectional
view. (c) The whole cooling system.
field in the proposed machine. It can be found that the radius of
the HTS winding meets the critical bending diameter of the
TABLE I
YBCO wire. The cooling Dewar adopts a dual-body design KEY PARAMETERS OF YBCO WIRES
where the inner part carries the liquid nitrogen and the space of Operating temperature 65 K
the outer part is vacuum, polytetrafluoroethylene supports are Operating current 100 A
Estimated critical current (65K) 125 A
placed between the inner and outer Dewars to achieve heat Conductor thickness 0.22 mm
insulation [12]. The outer layer is the electromagnetic (EM) Conductor width 5 mm
shield which operates at the ambient temperature. The HTS Conductor length (total) 9.8 m
field winding is immersed in the liquid nitrogen for keeping the Coil dimensions 5 mm 5.5 mm 390 mm
operation temperature at 65 K. Fig. 2(b) illustrates the cross-
sectional view of the proposed machine. The HTS winding and B. Operating Principle
the cryostat are all located in the stator. Fig. 2(c) depicts the
Since the proposed machine adopts a parallel hybrid
whole cooling system which consists of a supply Dewar, a
excitation configuration, the magnetic fields produced by PMs
supercooled tank, a vaporizer, a vacuum pump and a recycling
and the HTS field winding can be calculated individually. For
Dewar. The inlet and outlet of the cryostat of the HTS field
simplifying the modeling, the iron core of the machine is

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2017.2669138, IEEE
Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
> 3LPo2G-11 < 3

assumed to be infinitely permeable and the magnetic flux in the (t ) N clst r [ B pm ( , t ) Bdc ( , t )]d
air-gap only has a radial direction. The calculation model for
the two flux paths are shown in Fig. 3. N clst r ( F1P0 Fdc Pr ) cos N pm ( m 0 mt )d (5)
For the PM flux path, the air-gap flux density resembles that FP F PP
N clst r ( 1 1 dc r s ) cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 mt )]d
of the VPM machine. It can be expressed as: 2 2 Pdc
B pm ( , t ) F1 ( , t ) [ P0 P1 ( )] F1P1 Fdc Pr Ps
2 Pdc
N clst r ( ) cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 mt )]d
F1 P0 cos N pm ( m 0 mt ) 2
(1) where Nc is the number of turns per coil, lst is the stack length,
F1 P1
cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 mt )] and r is the radius of the stator.
2
From (5), it can be observed that the flux linkage can be
F1 P1
cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 mt )] flexibly regulated by changing the MMF of the HTS field
2
winding Fdc, hence enabling the control of the induced voltage.
where F1 is the amplitude of the fundamental component
produced by the magnetomotive force (MMF) of PMs, m and PMs 0 Iron poles +
0 are the mechanical angle and the initial angle, respectively, 0

P0 is the DC offset of the air-gap permeance, and P1 is the

amplitude of the fundamental component of the air-gap
permeance wave.
The air-gap flux density due to the HTS field winding can be
represented by two segments individually and then combined
together. For Seg. 1, the air-gap permeance wave can be
expressed as [1]:
Pdc1 ( , t ) Pdc Pr cos N pm ( m 0 m t )
(a) (b)
Pr Ps
Ps cos N s m cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 m t )] Fig. 3 Magnetic structure. (a) PM flux path. (b) HTS field flux path.
2 Pdc
Pr Ps TABLE II
cos[( N t N pm ) m N pm ( 0 m t )] KEY DESIGN DATA FOR PROPOSED MACHINE
2 Pdc Number of PM poles 222
(2) Number of iron poles 222
where Pdc is the average permeance, Pr is the half amplitude of Number of stator teeth 24/6
Phase number 3
permeance variation due to the iron poles of the rotor, and Ps is Stator inside diameter 50.0 mm
the half amplitude of permeance variation due to the stator Stator outside diameter 216.0 mm
teeth. Rotor inside diameter 217.2 mm
The flux density in the air-gap adjacent to Seg.1 can be Rotor outside diameter 250.0 mm
Stack length of each segment 80.0 mm
obtained as:
Total stack length 190.0 mm
F Air-gap length 0.6 mm
Bdc1 ( , t ) Pdc1 ( , t ) dc (3)
Armature coil turns per slot 60
2
HTS Material YBCO
where Fdc is the MMF produced by the HTS field winding.
Therefore, the resultant air-gap flux density due to the HTS
field winding can be deduced as: III. ANALYSIS
Bdc ( , t ) Fdc Pr cos N pm ( m 0 m t ) In order to evaluate the proposed machine, a downsized
Fdc Pr Ps (4) design of the proposed machine is dimensioned and its key
cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 m t )] design data are tabulated in Table II. Since the flux distribution
2 Pdc
in the machine is three-dimensional, 3-D finite element method
Fdc Pr Ps
cos[( N s N pm ) m N pm ( 0 m t )] (FEM) is applied for verifying the electromagnetic
2 Pdc performances of the proposed machine.
By comparing (1) and (4), it is found that all the
predominated harmonic components in air-gap can be regulated
by controlling the MMF of HTS field winding. Therefore, the
back electromotive force (EMF) can be effectively controlled.
A single coil flux linkage of the armature winding can be
expressed as:

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2017.2669138, IEEE
Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
> 3LPo2G-11 < 4

PM only
Field only for flux weakening 160
Field only for flux strengthening Fdc = -570 A-turn Fdc = -1150 A-turn
Fdc = 0
0.8 A-turn
Fdc = -1140 A-turn
120
Fdc = 0 A-turn Fdc = -2000 A-turn
Fdc = -2000 A-turn

Voltage (V)
Flux density (T)

0.4
80
Fdc = -2000 A-turn
Fdc = 0 A-turn

0.0 40 Fdc = 0 A-turn

Fdc = 0 A-turn
0
-0.4 0 5 10 15 20
Current (A)
0 120 240 360 Fig. 7. Output voltage under different load conditions.
Angle (Degree)
(a) The merit of the proposed machine with the HTS field
PM only winding is that its air-gap flux can be flexibly controlled. Fig. 4
Field only for flux weakening
Field only for flux strengthening shows the air-gap flux density waveforms due to PMs and the
HTS field winding. For flux strengthening, the MMF produced
0.4
by the HTS field winding has an opposite direction with that of
PM magnetization. For flux weakening, the MMF produced by
Flux density (T)

0.0 the HTS field winding has a similar direction with that of PM
magnetization. It coincides with (4) and (5). By controlling the
current amplitude injecting into the HTS field winding, the
-0.4 induced voltage can be adjusted. Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 shows the
induced voltage under different excitation conditions. It can be
-0.8
found that the voltage amplitude varies from 291.2 V to 87.6 V
when the MMF varies from -2000 A-t to 2000 A-t. During the
0 120 240 360 flux weakening operation, since the MMF of the HTS field
Angle (Degree) winding and the PMs has the same direction, the core saturation
(b) is easily achieved. Therefore, the flux strengthening capability
Fig. 4. Air-gap flux density waveforms. (a) In the Air-gap adjacent to Seg.1. (b) is better than the flux weakening capability.
In the Air-gap adjacent to Seg.2. With this merit, the voltage regulation can greatly be
400
Fdc = -2000 A-turn improved. Fig. 7 shows the output voltage of the proposed
No flux
machine under different load currents. It can be observed that
200 control without flux control, the output voltage drops dramatically
Voltage (V)

along with the increase of the load current. When the load
0 current is higher than 17A, there is no output voltage. By using
Fdc = 2000 A-turn flux strengthening, the output voltage can be kept as constant
-200 even when the load current is around 15 A. When the load
current is 20 A, the output voltage is about 80 V. By using the
flux control, the voltage regulation performance is greatly
-400
0 4 8 12 improved which is essential for wind power generation.
Time (ms)

Fig. 5. Induced voltage waveforms under different field excitation at 300rpm.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new VPM machine using HTS field winding
300 for hybrid excitation is proposed for wind power generation.
The proposed machine adopts a parallel hybrid excitation
Field
200 PM+Field configuration which can avoid the accidentally demagnetizing
Voltage (V)

of PMs. The proposed machine configuration, cooling system

design and operating principle are discussed. By regulating the
100 current in the HTS field winding, the flux control of the
proposed machine is realized. Therefore, the output voltage can
0 be kept as constant under different operating speed. Moreover,
-3000 -2000 -1000 0 1000 2000 3000 output voltage regulation is improved by flux control. These
Field MMF (A-turn) features are very promising for wind power generation.
Fig. 6. Variation of no-load voltage amplitude under different field excitation
at 300 rpm.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2017.2669138, IEEE
Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
> 3LPo2G-11 < 5

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