Research grant for wind turbine manufacturer

Wind turbine manufacturer Windflow Technology has received a research grant of NZ$ 130,000 from Technology New Zealand through its Technology for Business Growth (TBG) scheme. The grant will provide half of the funding for the company to prove the suitability of its Windflow 500 turbine for use in small, isolated networks such as islands or remote communities. The research will involve the company in refining the torque-limiting feature of its gearbox to include a dynamic control system that will respond to both the varying demands of a small network and the available wind energy simultaneously. The research project will also demonstrate the ability of the Windflow synchronous design to ‘ride through’ a fault in the electrical grid. Fault-ride-through is important not only for isolated grid applications but also for national grid-connected wind farms as wind power becomes a significant source of generation. The issue of wind power’s fault-ride-through capability has become a major concern internationally in recent years.