Joining me today is Eric Bibby to help explain the often misunderstood topic of random vs form wound generators. Eric is an Electrical Engineer from Purdue and has been at Cat for 13 years. Eric has held positions ranging from Application and Product development to supporting our dealers currently in the SE portion of the United States.
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Joining me today is Eric Bibby to help explain the often misunderstood topic of random vs form wound generators. Eric is an Electrical Engineer from Purdue and has been at Cat for 13 years. Eric has held positions ranging from Application and Product development to supporting our dealers currently in the SE portion of the United States.
Email us: powerbytes@cat.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/cat-electric-power/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Caterpillar.Electric.Power/
Lou: Good Day and welcome everyone to Power Bytes! I am your host Lou Signorelli and Power Bytes is your destination Podcast for power generation conversation. As always please know how much we appreciate you, our listeners. We hope you find our topics helpful and interesting. There are several ways for you to get in touch with the show. You can send us an email at powerbytes@cat.com, visit us at Cat Electric Power on Facebook or LinkedIn. If you enjoy your time with us today Please remember to subscribe to our podcast.
Lou: Joining me today is Eric Bibby to help explain the often misunderstood topic of random vs form wound generators. Eric is an Electrical Engineer from Purdue and has been at Cat for 13 years. Eric has held positions ranging from Application and Product development to supporting our dealers currently in the SE portion of the United States.
Welcome Eric.
Lou: First let’s start with a little “generator windings 101". What are windings?
Eric: The generator end or alternator, depending on what part of the world you’re from, is essentially made up of coils of wire called windings. One set of windings remains stationary, the stator, while the other spins, known as the rotor. While spinning the magnetic field of one coil interacts with the other and electricity is produced. Obviously a lot more goes into it than that, but essentially the basic premise is - if you want to create electricity you rotate a coil of wire in a magnetic field.
Lou: Why should people be concerned with how the generator is wound?
Eric: Different types of windings have different characteristics. There are different shapes and sizes of conductors along with different methods of manufacturing.
Lou: Speaking of different manufacturing techniques, can you explain to me the terms form wound and random wound and highlight the differences?
Eric: with Form Wound the wire is square or rectangular in shape and the turns are systematically arranged. This allows for a more uniform arrangement of the coils and turn to turn voltage. Random Wound on the other hand, utilizes more typical round wire and the arrangement between the turns is not definite. For example turn 1 could be laying over turn 4 or 4 over 7, unlike Form Wound which are placed in predetermined locations.
Lou: Are there performance advantages from one to the other?
Eric: Typically, form wound generators are viewed as being more robust. The nature of the windings allows for each coil to be individually taped and the uniform distribution allows for more universal resin distribution during the epoxy process.
Lou: Is there a cost difference between them?
Eric: Yes, Form Wound wire is more expensive due to both increased manufacturing and material costs.
Lou: Can you give some examples of when I would use which product in different types of applications?
Eric: To start, all of Caterpillar’s HV gensets will be FW, which, in our world is anything above 1kV. We’ll discuss the nuances of LV vs. HV in an upcoming podcast. Also, with form wound coils being more robust you will typically see them being spec’d in harsher environments or in application with noisy or high harmonic loads within the system as form wound coils tend to hold up better under the stresses of a system with high harmonic fluctuations.
Lou: Overall which product would you most commonly assume should be specified?
Eric: Of course it is going to be application dependent. Recently we have seen a shift in the SB market moving more toward RW generator sets. With increased insulation capability using VPI (vacuum pressure impregnation) along with the utilization of robotic winding machines making a random wound machine "less random", they have closed some of the capability gap with FW machines. That coupled with increasingly cost sensitive markets requiring only low running hours, we have seen more and more of a shift toward the acceptance of RW machines.
Lou: So, if I were to sum up what I've learned today…. It seems that each winding technique has its value, HOWEVER, for the cost conscious user in a standby application, special consideration or attention should be paid to the RW generators to lower project costs? Did I get that right
Eric: Yes, I would agree. Some application may drive you to one or the other, but looking at all the options available early on could really help drive unnecessary cost out of the project.
Lou: There you have it folks. I'd like to thank Eric Bibby for sharing his insights with us today… and thank you, our listeners for listening to Power Bytes.
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