Development of Next Generation Large Wind Turbine Generator System

The wind power generation capacity exceeds 40GW in the world. There are about 800 turbines of 730MW in Japan. Growing market requires newer and larger wind turbines. So, rated output of wind turbine has increased double every four years since last 10 years. It's a very hard target for turbine manufacturers. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. is the only one manufacturer of MW class large wind turbines in Japan. We have produced first 2MW wind turbine in Japan at Okinawa in march 2003. The technical problems about large wind turbines and tactics to solve them are described. First tactics is how to extend the relative strength of turbine equipmemts. Second tactics is how to reduce the load acting to turbines. Wind turbines at Miyako island have been severely damaged by typhoon No.14 in 2003. It revealed that wind turbines are not so strong enough when yaw control has been lost by power failure. The new technology to survive power failure, named "SmatYaw" is explained.