The Fall 2019 newsletter about the DOE Wind Energy Technologies Office's R&D projects, accomplishments, upcoming events, and recent publications.
Wind Energy Technologies Office
September 26, 2019
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The biannual U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Research and Development (R&D) Newsletter provides recent news about the DOE Wind Energy Technologies Office's R&D projects, news, accomplishments, and recent publications.
Letter from the Wind Energy Technologies Office Director, Robert C. Marlay
As the new director of the Wind Energy Technologies Office, I am pleased to join a superb team of professionals at DOE and our National Laboratories in working to advance the prospects of wind energy—on land, offshore, and distributed throughout the country. There are huge opportunities for wind energy, as well as challenges, and we have exciting plans for the future to address them. I am eager to get out and about and meet with many of you who are joining with us in this bold endeavor.
Current Research & Development
National Consortium Poised To Make a Splash
Momentum builds for partnership advancing R&D for the U.S. offshore wind industry
With a host of new partners and an open call for research proposals, the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium—established with $41 million initial funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)—is ready to make a splash.
Data on the potential offshore wind resource suggest more than 2,000 gigawatts (GW) could be accessed along the coasts of the United States and the Great Lakes. In New York State alone, leaders have committed to 9,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind energy development by 2035—enough energy to power up to six million homes.
Bigger Equals Better When It Comes to Wind Energy Potential
Researchers do the math on innovative blade configurations
DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) are searching for ways to maximize the advantages of large-scale rotors and their potential for increased energy generation. Their work as part of DOE’s Big Adaptive Rotor (BAR) project aims to develop 5-MW land-based turbines with 206-meter (m) rotors.
Basic math can easily explain the benefits of larger turbines. To sum it up, bigger equals better.
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A new scalable offshore floating wind system provides novel solutions to cut costs and overcome challenges of deepwater offshore environments. -
A2e initiative addresses the need to have reliable, applicable wind data by establishing and funding the Data Archive and Portal (DAP). -
System operators have a new tool for bringing intuition to the deluge of wind data—a visualizer for wind power forecasts called WindView. -
Offshore wind representatives met this spring to discuss meteorology and oceanography research to support offshore wind projects in the U.S.
Penn State took home first place in the 2019 Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC), and the program has remained in the news. Stories have looked at how participation helped prepare one student for career success, how Team Juracán from Puerto Rico survived Hurricane Maria, how the Chico State team competed despite the California wildfires that closed their campus, and how KidWind students benefit from CWC student involvement. The 2020 Collegiate Wind Competition will be held at the AWEA WINDPOWER Conference in Denver, Colorado, June 1-4, 2020, and NREL issued a request for proposals from 2021 CWC teams this September.
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Offshore wind market, technology, and cost trends in the United States and worldwide. -
Learn more about efforts to develop America's vast offshore wind resources. -
Top trends leading the offshore wind market into a decade of unprecedented growth. -
Brush up on your knowledge of wind! Get the details on a few of the lesser-known wind energy facts.
DOE’s EERE Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has awarded grants to two wind energy projects for their first phase of research:
- An energy-saving process to repurpose waste from end-of-life wind turbine blades (Carbon Rivers)
- A system for offshore wind plant operators to monitor turbines and diagnose problems remotely (Qualtech Systems).
Three more SBIR grants were awarded to wind energy projects that demonstrated commercial feasibility for the second phase of research:
- A new blade coating that will reduce damage to wind turbine blades caused by lightning (Aquanis)
- A low-cost marine atmospheric boundary layer measurement system (Helios Remote Sensing Systems)
- A profiling microwave radiometer for offshore wind farms (Boulder Environmental Sciences & Technology).
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The National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium has announced the availability of funding for additional offshore wind R&D topics. -
Projects will strengthen partnerships between National Laboratories and private sector companies to deploy promising technologies to the marketplace. -
DOE selected ten projects totaling $6.8 million that will reduce the impacts of land-based and offshore wind energy on bats and other wildlife. -
Awards will help researchers develop lightweight, efficient turbine drivetrain systems for tall wind and offshore applications.
Featured Publications
Visit the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Wind Technology Resource Center for research reports, publications, data sets, and online tools developed by National Laboratories and their facilities.
- 2018 Offshore Wind Technologies Market Report
- 2018 Wind Technologies Market Report
- 2018 Distributed Wind Market Report
- 2018 Distributed Wind Market Report Fact Sheet
- A Detailed Wind Turbine Blade Cost Model
- A Systematic Approach to Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Pre-Design and Optimization: Geometry, Cost, and Surrogate Structural Code Check Models
- An Introduction to Grid Services: Concepts, Technical Requirements, and Provision from Wind
- Atmosphere to Electrons: Enabling the Wind Plant of Tomorrow
- Benchmarking Wind Power Operating Costs in the United States: Results from a Survey of Wind Industry Experts
- Benchmarks for Model Validation Based on LiDAR Wake Measurements
- Block Island and Beyond slideshow: Offshore Wind Energy in the United States
- California Time-of-Use Transition: Effects on Distributed Wind and Solar Economic Potential
- Crossing Multiple Gray Zones in the Transition from Mesoscale to Microscale Simulation over Complex Terrain
- Distributed Wind Resource Assessment Framework: Functional Requirements and Metrics for Performance and Reliability Modeling
- Effects of Inflow Spatiotemporal Discretization on Wake Meandering and Turbine Structural Response using FAST.Farm
- Explicit Filtering and Reconstruction to Reduce Grid Dependence in Convective Boundary Layer Simulations Using WRF-LES
- Humpback Whale Encounter with Offshore Wind Mooring Lines and Inter-Array Cables
- IEA Wind TCP Task 37—Systems Engineering in Wind Energy—WP2.1 Reference Wind Turbines
- Increasing Wind Turbine Tower Heights: Opportunities and Challenges
- Initial Results From a Field Campaign of Wake Steering Applied at a Commercial Wind Farm – Part I
- Investigation of Roller Sliding in Wind Turbine Gearbox High-Speed-Shaft Bearings
- Large Eddy Simulations of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Wakes with Coupled Platform Motion
- Lidar Buoy Loan Program Fact Sheet
- National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium: Research and Development Roadmap
- National Offshore Wind Strategy
- Offshore Wind Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Energy
- R&D Pathways for Supersized Wind Turbine Blades
- Results of IEA Wind TCP Workshop on a Grand Vision for Wind Energy Technology
- The Vineyard Wind Power Purchase Agreement: Insights for Estimating Costs of U.S. Offshore Wind Projects
- The Wind Energy Workforce in the United States: Training, Hiring, and Future Needs
- Understanding the Role of Short-Term Energy Storage and Large Motor Loads for Active Power Controls by Wind Power
- Uptower Investigation of Main and High-Speed-Shaft Bearing Reliability
- U.S. Department of Energy Wind Energy Facilities Book
- Wind Energy Instrumentation Atlas
- Wind Turbine Radar Interference Mitigation Fact Sheet
- Workshop on Research Needs for Offshore Wind Resource Characterization
- WREN: Working Together To Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy
Explore previous editions of the Wind R&D Newsletter or browse articles by topic:
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