Northern Engineering Industries Plc

William M Somerville

A control system for a stand-alone electrical generator driven by a prime mover such as a wind turbine in which switches are operable in response to changes in the frequency of the generator output to change the load imposed on the generator by resistor means. The resistor means includes domestic resistive heaters and dump resistors, the switches for the former turning 'on' at frequencies lower than those at which the latter turn 'on'. The frequencies at which the several switches in a given consumer's premises switch 'on' are interlaced with the frequencies of the switches in other premises so as to avoid discrimination between consumers. The output frequency is thus kept relatively constant despite changes in wind speed.

Electrical generator control system

A mooring winch system in which automatic mooring duty is performed by a winch having an AC motor fed from the supply via a converter which includes a DC to AC inverter, the convertor producing a balanced three-phase square, quasi-square, sinusoidal or quasi-sinusoidal output. The motor thus can stall indefinitely, be driven in the sense of rope payout by tension force in the mooring rope, or run in the opposite sense to recover rope, without exceeding its rated temperature for that duty. Rope recovery is adequate both for normal duties and also where higher speeds of recovery are required and rope tension is maintained substantially constant throughout.

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Newcastle, United Kingdom

William M Somerville