The Leading Edge: August 2021 Wind Energy Newsletter
In this edition, a spark of brilliance helps prevent lightning damage to wind turbines,
students discuss their summer internships at NREL, and new resources for potential
wind energy projects go online.
NREL scientists recently developed a lightning protection system for wind turbine blades. Made from a new type of more easily recyclable material—thermoplastic resin composites—the
blades are manufactured with a new, patent-pending thermal welding process.
Created in partnership with General Electric and LM Wind Power and with funding from
the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Technology Commercialization Fund, the wind turbine “lightning shield” can divert about 80% of a lightning strike’s
current away from the metal heating elements to prevent catastrophic damage or failure.
Sparking research. NREL researchers designed a way to protect thermally welded wind turbine blades from
catastrophic failure caused by lightning strikes. The research makes commercializing
this technology more likely.
As this summer comes to a close, students participating in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program are wrapping up their contributions to exciting, ongoing wind energy research at
NREL. Here’s a peek at a few of the hard-working interns our researchers had the pleasure
of mentoring.
For his SULI project, Dakota Sky Potere-Ramosdeveloped a floating platform model for an offshore reference wind turbine, with which
he obtained a design with the lowest lifetime cost-to- energy-production ratio that
will be used as the base design for future optimization and validation work. Majoring
in mechanical engineering with a minor in mathematics, Potere-Ramos is a senior undergraduate
student at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He was mentored at NREL byJohn Jasa and said he most enjoyed the program’s intern-mentor discussion series. “These meetings
allowed me to learn from and collaborate with a group of researchers of varied backgrounds
and research fields,” he explained.
Anna Clark, an engineering physics student at Stanford University in the class of 2023, focused
her efforts on improving the sampling approach that generates data used to train surrogate
models, decreasing computational costs and increasing user access to reliability-based
wind farm optimization modeling. “I really enjoyed learning about the math behind
the method Dr. Clark and I ended up choosing to optimize our sampling approach!” Clark
said, referring to her NREL mentor, Caitlyn Clark.
This summer, Michael LoCascio developed a formulation to determine time-averaged wake velocity for his SULI project,
which will speed up annual wind farm energy production calculations in optimization
studies. LoCascio, a second-year graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford
University who was mentored by Luis “Tony” Martínez Tossas and Christopher Bay, said his favorite part of the experience was the premeeting banter. “It was a welcome
relief and a complement to the stimulating and engaging technical work that follows,”
he said. “The approachable environment makes me want to return to work here someday!”
Student input. (From left to right)Dakota Sky Potere-Ramos, Anna Clark, and Michael LoCascio and several other students
contributed to NREL wind energy research this summer as part of the Science Undergraduate
Laboratory Internship program. Photos from the students
On the Radar
Guiding wind. The Land-Based Wind Energy Economic Development Guide is a WINDExchange resource
and technical assistance tool. Graphic by John Frenzl, NREL
Wind energy projects offer a wide range of benefits to nearby communities, including
job creation, revenue for landowners, and an increased tax base. But every project
is different, and communities have many variables to consider when deciding if wind
energy is right for them. To help local decision makers determine whether a wind energy
project is right for their community, DOE's WINDExchange initiative has released two
resources: a report titled Land-Based Wind Energy Siting: A Foundational and Technical Resource and an online Land-Based Wind Energy Economic Development Guide.
Funded by DOE's Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) and created by experts at NREL,
these comprehensive, easy-to-read resources provide useful information about the siting
considerations and economic opportunities associated with a potential wind energy
project.
The distributed wind industry, which brings wind energy closer to users, needs to
reduce costs and increase customer confidence. But many companies that build these
wind turbines lack the resources to develop and certify their next-generation technology.
That’s why WETO works with small businesses across the United States to advance wind
technology as a distributed energy resource through the Competitiveness Improvement Project, managed by NREL. On Aug. 3, 2021, DOE announced the eight small businesses that will help develop cost-effective, grid-supported, and reliable distributed wind
energy technologies that have grid-supporting capabilities and compatibility with
hybrid energy systems.
Robotic reach. Wind turbine blade manufacturing can benefit from automation. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL
A robot with a 3-meter arm could help build better-quality, lower-cost wind turbine
blades. At NREL’s Composites Manufacturing Education and Technology facility, researchers
are exploring the possibility of automating the wind turbine blade-finishing process. Automation could increase the size and quality of these utility-scale blades while
keeping workers safe and decreasing engineering and manufacturing challenges.
To complete this work, NREL partnered with General Electric Renewables/LM Wind Power,
the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, and DOE's Advanced
Manufacturing Office. This news was also covered by LM Wind Power, CleanTechnica, reNEWS, Renewable Energy Magazine, Composites World, and others.
A 600-megawatt wind power plant in the Gulf of Mexico could generate thousands of
jobs and millions of dollars annually, according to a 2020 report from NREL and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. This report, The National Law Review wrote in a recent news article, supports a new, federal request issued to gauge interest in offshore wind energy
development in the Gulf of Mexico. The article quotes NREL researcher Walt Musial:
“As we seek to diversify the U.S. energy supply using ocean renewable resources, we
are finding that the existing oil and gas industries in the Gulf are able to leverage
their vast ocean-based capabilities to expand their businesses and capitalize on these
new energy opportunities.”
NREL's distributed wind research capabilities span from design, modeling, and simulation
to resource characterization and analysis and, finally, to manufacturing. Now, through
the Wind Energy Science Leadership Webinar Series, NREL's world-class experts weigh
in on topics to advance the distributed wind industry. In the latest recording, learn
how distributed wind can reduce costs and improve small-scale wind turbine plant performance.
In a recent webinar, hosted by WETO's WINDExchange program, NREL researcher Walt Musial provided an overview of the foundation technology of
offshore, fixed-bottom wind turbines.
In response to language set forth in The Energy Act of 2020, WETO and NREL hosted
a virtual technical workshop in March 2021 to explore the potential for, and technical
viability of, airborne wind energy (AWE) systems as means to provide a significant
source of energy in the United States. Attended by more than 100 experts and interested
parties, the workshop provided relevant, primarily U.S. stakeholders from industry,
government, national laboratories, and academia with the opportunity to “evaluate
the status, development potential, and technical viability of AWE systems,” which
is the conversion of wind energy into electricity using tethered flying devices. A
report summarizes the key findings discovered during the workshop, including AWE's energy potential, technology needs, societal and environmental impacts,
economic considerations, and research, development, validation, and commercialization
needs.
A lidar instrument installed on the nacelle of a wind turbine measures the wake produced
behind the wind turbine. Photo by Andrew Scholbrock, NREL
In this Wind Energy Science journal article, the authors present results from a 3-month wake steering experiment at a commercial wind plant involving two wind turbines spaced 3.7 rotor diameters apart. The authors estimated
that, during the experiment period, wake steering reduced wake losses by 5.7% for
the wind direction sector investigated. After the authors applied a long-term correction
to the expected long-term wind conditions for the site, the reduction in wake losses
increased to 9.8%. In addition, the authors compared the measured performance of wake
steering to predictions using NREL’s FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) wind farm control tool coupled with a wind direction variability model and
found that, when incorporating the predicted achieved yaw offsets, estimates of the
energy improvement from wake steering using FLORIS closely match the experimental
results.
In 2018, as part of the REDucing cost of offshore WINd by integrated structural and
geotechnical design project (REDWIN), the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute developed
a model to assess the soil structure of the seafloor. This model can be used to plan
and standardize offshore wind turbine development. After integrating REDWIN's new
capability with other modeling tools used to design fixed-bottom offshore wind systems,
researchers verified the integration with a sample case system. Now, NREL researchers
have released a report that provides the details that went into modeling that sample case system, which
can be used with REDWIN’s and other modeling approaches.
