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DOE OSTI2024

The Cost of Offshore Wind Energy in the United States From 2025 to 2050

This study presents estimates of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of offshore wind energy throughout major U.S. coastal regions between a time frame of 2025 - 2050. The LCOE modeling accounts for impacts of supply chain shocks, inflation, and rising interest rates on cost. Given the near-term uncertainty in these factors, we present three possible scenarios driven by how uncertainty in costs, technology, and deployment may evolve over time. The cost increases reported by industry in recent years will likely be felt over next several years, but we expect long-term cost reductions enabled by growing offshore wind deployment and industry learning. This study helps inform decision-makers about the potential role that offshore wind energy can play in future clean energy strategies.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2021

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing and Innovation Circular Economy for Wind Workshop Report

Wind turbine blade waste is anticipated to amount to approximately 2.2 million tons or more by 2050 (more than the equivalent weight of 6 empire state buildings). However, no existing recycling technologies for the composites in wind turbines are currently at cost-parity with landfilling. As such, there is little industrial drive to recycle these materials, so they are currently buried. If it were possible to develop a circular economy for wind blades it could directly reduce material feedstock costs for many composites industries, facilitate the tremendous, anticipated growth of the domestic off-shore wind energy sector, and help the U.S. achieve net-zero manufacturing and energy generation. However, to enable circular economies for wind blades, several questions need to be answered.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2022

Defining the Wind Energy Workforce Gap

This report shares insights as to what the wind energy workforce gap is and why it exists, and how to inform industry, educational institutions, and the potential workforce so that they can reduce barriers and better connect the wind energy workforce through existing and novel pathways. The insights used in this report were collected from two web-based surveys, one designed for industry and the other designed for the potential workforce.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Great Lakes Wind Energy Challenges and Opportunities Assessment

Many issues associated with wind development in the Great Lakes will require solutions different from those developed for offshore wind in ocean states and may not fully benefit from the industry learnings of nearby states. As a result, technology readiness and cost reduction for Great Lakes Wind (GLW) energy generation is likely to be delayed relative to other regions without a substantial, targeted GLW research campaign, and proactive stakeholder engagement in the region at all levels. Failure to conduct the necessary research to lower GLW costs in the near term could limit its contribution to the Nation's decarbonization goals by 2035, and could potentially raise long term energy prices in Great Lakes states if demand for renewable energy continues to accelerate. The overall objective of a research program such as that described in this report would be to enable the realization of commercial GLW before 2035. With the aim of ensuring that prospective development of GLW is conducted efficiently, safely, and coordinated in the best interests of the local residents and stakeholders, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) tasked the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to assist in (a) developing an improved understanding of offshore wind power's development potential in the Great Lakes, (b) identifying the key issues that need to be resolved for this potential to be achieved, and (c) defining a comprehensive research program to address and resolve these issues. This report presents the results of NREL's effort to address these needs.

cost modeling↗

DOE OSTI2022

FY 2021 Isolated Grids and Grid-Connected Turbine Reference Systems; Microgrids, Infrastructure Resilience, and Advanced Controls Launchpad (MIRACL)

For individuals, businesses, and communities focused on building resilient electrical grid infrastructure, wind energy can provide an affordable, accessible, and compatible distributed energy resource option that also enhances the capabilities of local grid operations. The Microgrids, Infrastructure Resilience, and Advanced Controls Launchpad (MIRACL) project is a multi-year distributed wind research effort, driven through a partnership between four Department of Energy National Laboratories and industry to develop and improve the planning, design, and operation of wind-centered microgrids to complement solar, energy storage, and other distributed energy resources for grid-tied and isolated operation (U.S. Department of Energy, 2021). This report documents the application of methods developed through the initial three years of the MIRACL project to two real-world distributed wind reference systems. Specifically, the methods demonstrated in this report include 1) a market valuation framework to comprehensively value the services distributed wind can provide and 2) a resilience framework that enables stakeholders to characterize distribution system resilience and compare grid investment decisions from a resilience perspective. Additional methods mentioned in this report include distributed hybrid system design methods for grid resilience, advanced control co-simulation platforms, and power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) models. Preliminary results from these additional methods are presented in this report and will be demonstrated and/or applied to the reference systems in the coming year. The purpose of applying these methods to reference systems is to drive technology transfer of the theories, methodologies, and technologies developed under the MIRACL project and increase the number of referenceable case studies available to stakeholders interested in additional value-added capabilities of wind systems beyond bulk energy supply (i.e. kilowatt-hours).

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Design of a Preliminary Family of Airfoils for High Reynolds Number Wind Turbine Applications

For the past 30 years, offshore wind turbines exhibited a continual pattern of growth that is expected to continue as the industry pushes for higher efficiency. Current designs for the next generation of wind turbines are so large that the chordwise Reynolds number of the blades is well beyond the design range of existing open-source airfoil families. This paper presents a preliminary family of new airfoils designed specifically for the needs of these next-generation offshore turbines, ranging from 21% thick to 30% thick with operating Reynolds numbers between 12 million and 18 million. These airfoils are intended to be alternative to the FFA airfoils that are commonly used on reference turbines such as the IEA 15MW and 22MW designs. In this work, airfoil performance metrics and design targets are developed, the design process is outlined, an optimization scheme is presented, and finally the airfoils and their simulated performance are compared to existing baselines. Lift to drag ratios in a clean condition were improved by up to 49.3% from the baseline FFA airfoil, and rough condition lift to drag ratio was improved by up to 9.3%. It is estimated that the cumulative improvements provided by this airfoil family would result in an approximately 1% increase of Annual Expected Power (AEP) for the 22 MW turbine compared to the current baseline.

airfoils↗

DOE OSTI2023

Development of a wind turbine model and simulation platform using an acausal approach: Multiphysics modeling, validation, and control

This article presents the development of the Control-oriented, Reconfigurable, and Acausal Floating Turbine Simulator (CRAFTS). CRAFTS has a modular, hierarchical model architecture that enables rapid and accurate simulation of wind turbines. The architecture facilitates the incorporation of model variants, and its system reconfiguration features help simulate multiple design variants. CRAFTS also supports the integration of models developed on a causality-free platform (e.g., Modelica®) with existing causal models. This article focuses on the validation of a land-based wind turbine models against OpenFAST, an industry-standard platform, for several test cases. Closed-loop scenarios are also tested using the standard ROSCO controller and compared against OpenFAST. In addition, a nonlinear controller developed in our prior work is also evaluated. The test cases demonstrate the user-friendly and computationally efficient capabilities of CRAFTS to facilitate control co-design, assist in incorporating multiphysics models, be adaptable to design variants, and allow for rapid simulations to validate models and evaluate controllers.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2023 Edition

Wind power additions in the United States totaled 8.5 gigawatts (GW) in 2022. Wind power growth has historically been supported by the industry’s primary federal incentive—the production tax credit (PTC)—as well as myriad state-level policies. Long-term improvements in the cost and performance of wind power technologies have also been key drivers for wind additions. Nonetheless, 2022 was a relatively slow year in terms of new wind power deployment—the lowest since 2018—due in part to ongoing supply chain pressures, higher interest rates, and interconnection and siting challenges, but also the reduction in the value of the PTC that was in place up until the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2024 Edition

Wind power additions in the United States totaled 6.5 gigawatts (GW) of capacity in 2023. 1 Wind power growth has historically been supported by the industry’s primary federal incentive—the production tax credit (PTC)—as well as numerous state-level policies. Long-term improvements in the cost and performance of wind power technologies have also been key drivers for wind additions, yielding low-priced wind energy for utility, corporate, and other power purchasers. Nonetheless, 2023 was a slow year in terms of new wind deployment, the lowest since 2014. Elevated interest rates played a role in slowing deployment, as did interconnection and siting challenges.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

Open-Source Offshore Airfoil Summary (V.1.0)

The Open-Source Offshore (OSO) airfoils have been developed for research purposes for offshore wind turbines, offering a set of airfoils that align with modern turbine design requirements and industry design practices without proprietary constraints on research use. The eventual airfoil family will target the IEA 22 MW reference wind turbine, which was originally developed with the FFA airfoils. The two airfoils summarized in Table 1 (OSO-21-WT1 and OSO-30-WT1) started development as part of a family of airfoils being designed to target the IEA 22 MW wind turbine. The criteria used to design these airfoils are summarized in Table 1, which aim to encapsulate requirements of modern airfoils for offshore wind turbine applications, and were developed with feedback from industry and research experts. The airfoils were designed using XFOIL and candidate airfoils were then analyzed in RFOIL, which is considered more accurate than XFoil for high lift predictions of thicker airfoils. The design process for a preliminary family of airfoils is available, including a more detailed explanation of the design requirements and metrics similar to those used for these airfoils. Most of the design criteria are met for these two airfoils, with two exceptions. For both airfoils, the L/D Roughness Loss metric is exceeded (42% > 40% goal) and the desired lift coefficient margin over the design value (“CL_Margin”) was moderately exceeded (0.43 > 0.3) while smooth-stall characteristics (computed) were achieved. Note that all of the metrics were computed using RFOIL, and like other new airfoils, these will need to be experimentally validated at a range of Reynolds numbers. The airfoil coordinates will be shared publicly on Sadia National Laboratories’ public Github repository:

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Safety Review of the Hydrogen Components of a Reference Design of the Wind-H2-Green Steel/Ammonia Project

The Department of Energy Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology Office and Wind Energy Technologies Office's Wind-H2-Green Steel/Ammonia project is an initiative to demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of GW-scale integrated energy systems. The team designed reference facilities that utilize wind- and solar-produced hydrogen for industrial steel and ammonia production. This novel concept warranted review of safety codes and standards as they apply to the designs and the identification of codes and standards gaps. This report reviews hydrogen production and storage codes and standards using reference design specifications from a Minnesota steel plant. Requirements, recommendations, and exclusions for the system were identified. Observed gaps included non-specific salt cavern storage requirements, electrolyzer capacity beyond regulated ranges, and lack of requirements for iron reduction via hydrogen. This report will aide future project design efforts and may provide a basis for safety reviews in new designs for industrial facilities with hydrogen production integration.

08 HYDROGEN↗

DOE OSTI2025

Maturing Rational Design Methodologies and Industry Consensus Engineering Standards: Critical Fastened Joints - Solar PV Industry

Critical structural joints can be seen throughout a solar array and are called upon to secure modules and keep racking assembled and able to resist large demands from winds and snow loads. In the relatively new and fast-growing solar PV industry, the important role these hardware assemblies (e.g. clips, clamps, bolts, nuts, washers) play is not well understood by product designers. Failures with critical structural joints are surprisingly common and point to the need for maturing the engineering and assembly of these joints. The wide variety of design concepts (Figure 2&2) demonstrate interesting and innovative ideas but are lacking the basics of fastener engineering seen in matured industries (e.g. transportation, buildings). Complicating the maturing process for critical structural joints is that they are one component in rack supporting structures that exhibits a systems behavior; each component will affect the other and play a key role in maintaining structural integrity. When wind loads the surface of a module, the underlying racking members deflect and twist which in turn imparts forces back into the joints and into the mounted modules. Often, these supporting rack structures exhibit high deflections and low natural frequencies which amplify the demands placed into the joints even in moderate winds. Current engineering practices and associated structural conventions view solar racking support structures as they would a high mass building that exhibit more static behaviors in wind events. Solar structures are unique from high mass buildings and require the development of solar specific industry engineering consensus standards.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2026

Biases in preconstruction estimates of wind plant annual energy production

Estimating the energy yield of a wind plant during the preconstruction phase is a historically difficult task, even with industry improvements in these estimations. We build on prior research comparing the realized energy production of wind plants and their estimated annual energy production P50 values (median energy production), using owner-provided energy production and losses. We produced similar results to prior studies but with a slightly increasing bias of overestimating median energy production (a bias between realized and estimated energy production of −7.4 % to −6.6 %, depending on the scenario, as opposed to −6.7 % to −5.5 % from earlier studies). In addition to assessing annual energy production P50 bias, we compared both the 1-year and the long-term annual energy production P90 and uncertainty energy yield assessment estimates to the observed long-term-corrected energy production. We found that neither the energy yield assessment uncertainty nor the P90 is conservative enough compared to the observed distribution of prediction errors, suggesting significant room for improvement in the energy yield assessment process.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2020

The importance of round-robin validation when assessing machine-learning-based vertical extrapolation of wind speeds

The extrapolation of wind speeds measured at a meteorological mast to wind turbine rotor heights is a key component in a bankable wind farm energy assessment and a significant source of uncertainty. Industry-standard methods for extrapolation include the power-law and logarithmic profiles. The emergence of machine-learning applications in wind energy has led to several studies demonstrating substantial improvements in vertical extrapolation accuracy in machine-learning methods over these conventional power-law and logarithmic profile methods. In all cases, these studies assess relative model performance at a measurement site where, critically, the machine-learning algorithm requires knowledge of the rotor-height wind speeds in order to train the model. This prior knowledge provides fundamental advantages to the site-specific machine-learning model over the power-law and log profiles, which, by contrast, are not highly tuned to rotor-height measurements but rather can generalize to any site. Furthermore, there is no practical benefit in applying a machine-learning model at a site where winds at the heights relevant for wind energy production are known; rather, its performance at nearby locations (i.e., across a wind farm site) without rotor-height measurements is of most practical interest. To more fairly and practically compare machine-learning-based extrapolation to standard approaches, we implemented a round-robin extrapolation model comparison, in which a random-forest machine-learning model is trained and evaluated at different sites and then compared against the power-law and logarithmic profiles. We consider 20 months of lidar and sonic anemometer data collected at four sites between 50 and 100 km apart in the central United States. We find that the random forest outperforms the standard extrapolation approaches, especially when incorporating surface measurements as inputs to include the influence of atmospheric stability. When compared at a single site (the traditional comparison approach), the machine-learning improvement in mean absolute error was 28 % and 23 % over the power-law and logarithmic profiles, respectively. Using the round-robin approach proposed here, this improvement drops to 20 % and 14 %, respectively. These latter values better represent practical model performance, and we conclude that round-robin validation should be the standard for machine-learning-based wind speed extrapolation methods.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2020

Providing Ramping Service with Wind to Enhance Power System Operational Flexibility

This project develops an innovative, integrated, and transformative approach to mitigate the impact of wind ramping by providing flexible ramping products from wind power. The project will significantly contribute to the reduction of wind integration costs by making wind power dispatchable and allowing the efficient management of wind ramping characteristics. In addition, we collaborated with industry to test and validate the methodology, considering economic and reliability goals, by integrating the proposed methodology into the simulated market frameworks of two independent system operators: California Independent System Operator and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Survey of Utility-Scale Wind and Solar Developers Report [Slides]

In 2023, Berkeley Lab conducted the first of its kind survey of industry professionals with direct experience working in community engagement and permitting of land-based, utility-scale wind and solar energy facilities in the U.S. The survey solicited information about project timelines over the last five years, leading causes of project delays and cancelations, community opposition, experience with permitting authorities, community engagement, comparisons between wind and solar, and other related topics. A total of 123 individuals responded to the survey for a response rate of 19.2%. Respondents were employed at 62 unique companies, which together are responsible for approximately half of the wind and solar developed from 2016 to 2023.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2023

2022 Project Commercialization and Market Development Awardee: Eocycle America Corporation

Annually, agriculture and related industries contribute approximately $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product and 11% of the nation's output of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, agribusiness operations account for about 30% of energy use worldwide. Distributed wind energy produced on site can power large-scale agricultural, industrial, and commercial operations in windy rural areas, offering cost savings, GHG emissions reductions, and the potential to supply excess electricity to the grid. Despite these benefits, agribusinesses have been slow to embrace the technology. Eocycle America Corporation (Eocycle) plans to develop partnerships with agriculture and related industries and implement a marketing strategy to educate corporate customers about the benefits of distributed wind. Through the CIP initiative, Eocycle will create a marketing plan to raise interest in distributed wind energy among large American and European corporations with operations in rural areas. Campaign goals are to encourage rapid deployment of distributed wind energy on a large scale, as well as to create high-paying energy sector jobs through increased manufacturing, sales, maintenance, and related services. Eocycle plans to identify 15 agriculture-related corporations with the potential for at least 25 turbine sales each.

Competitiveness Improvement Project↗

DOE OSTI2025

Considerations for the Global Commercialization of Floating Offshore Wind Energy

Floating offshore wind (FOW) has the potential to unlock access to wind resources in deep water where fixed-bottom turbines are not feasible, enabling coastal regions around the world to meet growing energy demands. Although fixed-bottom offshore wind is commercially mature, FOW, which may be needed for water deeper than 60 m, must progress in multiple ways to reach full commercial viability. In this Perspective, we examine the status of the global FOW industry's commercial development across three key areas - technical innovation, industrialization and cross-cutting value. Technical innovation has enabled FOW turbines to perform as well as fixed-bottom turbines, with the promise of future cost reductions. However, the complex architecture of FOW turbines, combining floating structures with more than 8,000 electrical and mechanical parts in wind turbines, requires industrialization efforts such as standardization and supply-chain integration to enable commercial project deployment. FOW can potentially offer unique benefits, including reduced environmental impacts and strengthened economic development in coastal regions, through substantial regional economic activity. Successful coordination across these three areas could help to position FOW as a major contributor to a competitive, reliable and resilient global energy system.

17 WIND ENERGY↗