Design of a sustainable wind generator system using redundant materials

This paper presents the design of a sustainable wind generator system using redundant materials. The topology makes use of permanent magnets from discarded computer hard disk drives. The challenges associated with these magnets are discussed in detail. An axial-flux machine topology is developed, which ensures balanced voltage production and eliminates the numerous end-connections associated with direct-driven wind generators which operate at low speed and have many poles. The performance of the machine is firstly predicted using classical theory. Detailed 2D and 3D numerical analysis of the machine topology is then presented and verified using experimental results.