Report from Hannover: Wind in the sails, the Hermes Award winner
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/22/2009 12:00:00 AM
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| Visitors inspect interior of Enercon wind turbine at Hannover Messe’s inaugural Wind 2009 trade fair. Source: Deutsche Messe |
Hannover, Germany – The central theme of this year’s Hannover Messe trade fair is energy—securing future energy supplies by using it more efficiently and by developing and deploying renewable energy technologies.
Hannover Messe is an umbrella event for 13 individual trade shows. One of these is Energy, which includes technologies ranging from smart meters for homes to superconducting cables for transmission lines. This year also marks the first year for a new trade fair, Wind. The Wind expo presented extraordinary displays, including a massive turbine from Enercon that allowed visitors to peer inside from an elevated platform (see photo).
Wind provides more than 70,000 jobs
Wind power accounts for approximately 7% of Germany’s energy production, is responsible for over 70,000 jobs, and is a strong export market. According to VDMA Power Systems Association (the German wind energy association), the wind sector has recorded growth rates of over 30 percent for the last three years in a row, and 70% of Germany’s wind power manufactured products are exported. It’s no wonder then that German engineers are refining wind turbines with the skill in engineering and manufacturing that the country is known for.
Underscoring Germany’s commitment to wind turbine R&D, the winner of this year’s coveted Hermes award was Voith Turbo GmBH, for their new WinDrive turbine technology. The juried Hermes award is conferred by Hannover Messe annually during the opening ceremony. The award includes a purse of 100,000 euros, said to be one of the largest purses in industrial competitions.
| Control Engineering editorial director David Greenfield, Consulting-Specifying Engineer editor Michael Ivanovich, and Plant Engineering editor Bob Vavra will be reporting from Hannover Messe this week on the new ideas and new technologies from the 2009 event. |
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Voith Turbo manufactures variable-speed hydrodynamic drives for controlling pumps, compressors and other turbo machinery in power generation. When presenting the award, the German Minister of Education and Research said that in addition to representing superior technological innovation, the WinDrive also represents the importance of developing technologies to combat climate change.
Engineering efficiency: how they did it
I stopped by the Voith Turbo exhibit and looked at a model of the WinDrive. It was amazingly simple. According to Uwe Reimesch, general manager of sales, the WinDrive uses a combination of a torque converter on the output end and a planetary gear designed as a superimposed gear on the input end.
Together, this assembly converts variable input speeds into constant output speeds for synchronous generators. This eliminates the need for a frequency inverter while providing network-quality power output. As a result, driveline weight is reduced by 20%, output and reliability are increased, and maintenance is decreased.
I asked, what he thought of the Hermes Award. “It’s great,” he said. “It’s just what a company needs to put wind in its sails when starting up a new product.”
Also read from MBT:
Millions of U.S. workers could gain from green industries
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Other Control Engineering coverage at Hannover Fair 2009:
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Report from Hannover: Innovations, efficiency
- Report from Hannover:
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- Michael Ivanovich, editor-in-chief, Consulting-Specifying Engineer.
Edited by Mark T. Hoske, Reed Business Information, www.mbtmag.com
