Turbine controller with hydraulic transmission, Chapdrive, Denmark,

ChapDrive, a Norwegian company, was developing an innovative hydraulic transmission for wind turbines to enable lower weight and be more cost efficient.

Because of their extensive experiences with the old Vestas wind turbines, Spica was asked to develop a new control system for an old Vestas V27 wind turbine. The control panel should be designed with an automatic gearbox, thus making the rotor speed variable meanwhile the generator was stable.

 

“Together with Spica Technology, we developed during a six-month period a completely new control system for the prototype that we were testing. We got the results we wanted and were very happy with the cooperation.” Knud Erik Thomsen, Chief Technical Officer of ChapDrive.

 

The ChapDrive Control system is able to absorb fluctuations in the wind speed and keep a constant power output without the use of frequency converters.