Wind power as a substitute to burning fossil fuels, is abundant, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas radiations during operation, and uses little land. With the accelerating electricity consumption and increasing threat from the green-house effect and consequential environmental degradation, all EU countries are stepping forward into the reduction of energy consumption and loss of energy. While onshore wind is an economical source of electricity, competitive with or in many places inexpensive than coal or gas plants, offshore wind is securer and stronger than on land, but construction and maintenance costs are considerably higher. However, key industry challenges such as difficulty in erection, inconvenience in maintenance, transmission costs, durability, and environmental concerns have turned the trends towards the small onshore wind farms that can nourish some energy into the grid or provide electricity to isolated off-grid locations. All these goals have created a business opportunity that EVR Motors is meant to exploit with SWITLER. Our direct-drive generator of novel technology will lower the nacelle weight by at least 30%, while increasing its capacity factor by 10% up to 40%, and reducing the drive (no gearbox failures) and installation (ca. 20%) costs, all at a very competitive cost.
Our SWITLER project will boost the commercialization of an innovative gearless direct-drive generator for use in small wind turbines based on an ironless rotor permanent magnetic system of transverse flux technology suitable for variable RPM (revolutions per minute) input sources of very high efficiency (up to 96% at the entire operational range of the SWT) and very low weight (ca. 50% lighter than current machines).
On completion of the SWITLER project, we will industrialize the manufacturing process of our direct-drive generator. Then, SWITLER begins to gain traction in the market, enters the production cycle early 2019, initially for installations in Israel, and shortly afterwards for market expansion to the UK, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Spain (EU countries with the highest growth for the small wind industry offering attractive FITs or a significant quota) satisfying demand from future customers. For that market launch, we are working towards commercialization agreements with small wind turbine manufacturers in Europe such as Ergycon and Sea Power in Italy, Xant, and EoWind in Belgium.
