GE has broken new ground in their newest turbine design. This gearless generator has so much potential. It is almost certain to revolutionize turbine repair and maintainance. This turbine is also a 4mw generator making it a hard hitter in the realm of energy generation. The electricity produced with one, the less footprint made on ocean floors. The footprint issue is also a concern for land based installations where the number of acres covered by footings and foundations cuts in (however minimally) to agricultural use and vegetation habitit.

Some technicians could get sucked into the old-world way of thinking "less job security-less maintainance",

but considering the number of technicians that will be needed to meet the renewable energy mandates of the coming 20 years, I am not concerned. This design class will make renewable energy cost less, and therefore will make it even more preferable to non-renewables.

Credit for this image goes to POPSCI and GE. I lifted it from this nice article http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/next-gen-wind-turbine

and hope that my using it will benefit GE and the wind industry.

Possibly the largest benefit to lower maintainance designs is that they become more usable in off-shore and hard to reach applications where they will be out of the way, and capitalize on harsher conditions where there is more wind to be harnessed.

These ocean and lake based installs (see Lake Erie)

http://www.gcbl.org/blog/marc-lefkowitz/first-off-shore-wind-within-reach

offer much potential, but are very difficult and costly to service and maintain.

This recent innovation in low-maintainance turbines stands to push off-shore applications to the forefront. They effect wildlife less, and counter the weak but prevalent "eyesore" complaint from wind energy opponents.

 There is a Vestas V15 at my school now to look at and work on. We are enjoying opportunities to discuss how it works, and look at a real-life example. On this trip to see it we were discussing how to possibly build an adjustable bracket for the Generator to sit on so that its alignment could be checked and adjusted easily.

This is the hub and the forward shaft. This assembly is sometimes simply called the Rotor.

The gearbox (yellow part) increases the rotor's initial slow shaft speed to 1800 RPM's required by the generator to make A/C power.

This is the high-speed shaft and generator. The second smaller generator is used at off-peak times when the rotor speed is not enough to operate the main generator.

Mechanical

In the 3rd module of NW-REI's curriculum I am learning about many things mechanical. We have studied gear drives, shafts, fasteners (keys), and are moving into bearings and multiple shaft drives.
This has been a very informative section so far, with more lab work than written material. The trainers we use have a bed-plate with various mounting configurations drilled into it, a few motor types, and a large selection of mounting spacers, gears, hardware, shafts, and a tool selection. We have experimented with various gear set-ups and what written material there is coincides sensibly to the physical practice we are getting in class. So much of this makes perfect sense for turbines. I can see that the functions we are performing relate directly to the mechanical repairs we will be performing on wind machines.

I like this picture. It is an automotive image however many of the gear types are gears that reside in gearboxes inside the turbine nacelles that increase main rotor shaft speeds from 12-20 up to 1800 rpm's.
Some of these machines weigh as much as 18 tons.

The answer is blowing in the wind.