Investing in Wind Energy Success

Letter from the Wind Energy Technologies Office Acting Director

In my first letter to you as the Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO), I am simply in awe of the continued progress made by the wind industry as I reflect on the past year. Since I joined WETO last fall, I have witnessed a number of milestones for both our office and the wind industry broadly.

In offshore wind, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced in December $18.5 million to establish an offshore wind research consortium. In distributed wind, Primus Wind Power became the first awardee of the Competitiveness Improvement Project to achieve a certified turbine when the Primus Air40 was certified in February 2018.

This past year we also released the 2017 Peer Review Report, which summarizes feedback on the office's initiatives and investments across the nation. WETO is using the feedback from peer reviewers to help assess and revise the office's current and future research portfolio, ensuring effective investment of taxpayer dollars. DOE's investments support energy science research and development activities that enable industry innovation to improve the performance and lower the cost of wind energy technologies.

I am proud to say that in the 3 years since the Wind Vision's release, DOE has funded several projects intended to support the goals set forth in the document. With performance improvement in mind, a wake steering experiment at Sandia National Laboratories' Scaled Wind Farm Technology facility showed successfully that the wake of an upwind turbine can be steered away from a downwind turbine. In pursuit of preventing premature turbine failure and lowering maintenance costs, a new wind turbine drivetrain gearbox and main bearing is being validated on-site at the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

On behalf of my colleagues and everyone at WETO, thank you for joining me in celebrating the power of wind.

Sincerely,

Valerie Reed, Acting Director, Wind Energy Technologies Office

For more information about WETO's research and development project portfolio, visit our interactive projects map.