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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

IEA Wind TCP: Results of IEA Wind TCP Workshop on a Grand Vision for Wind Energy Technology

This report provides workshop findings including the future landscape of the electricity system with over 50% of the electricity supply from wind energy, a review of key innovation opportunities in different topic areas that will be embodied in the wind power plant of the future (including innovations that both reduce levelized cost of energy and increase system value of wind energy), and identification of the key R&D challenges that must be addressed to realize the wind power plant of the future and the Grand Vision.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Field Testing Research at the NWTC (Fact Sheet)

The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) at the National Renewable Laboratory (NREL) has extensive field testing capabilities that have been used in collaboration with the wind industry to accelerate wind technology development and deployment for more than 30 years.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2013

NREL Innovations Help Drive Wind Industry Transformation [Fact Sheet]

For nearly 30 years, NREL has helped the wind turbine industry through design and research innovations. The comprehensive capabilities of the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC), ranging from specialized computer simulation tools to unique test facilities, has been used to design, develop, and deploy several generations of advanced wind energy technology.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Fatigue Test Design: Scenarios for Biaxial Fatigue Testing of a 60-Meter Wind Turbine Blade

Current practice in commercial certification of wind turbine blades is to perform separate flap and lead-lag fatigue tests. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been researching and evaluating biaxial fatigue testing techniques and demonstrating various options, typically on smaller-scale test articles at the National Wind Technology Center. This report evaluates some of these biaxial fatigue options in the context of application to a multimegawatt blade certification test program at the Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

International Energy Agency 22 MW Offshore Reference Wind Turbine

The presentation will be used in a public webinar to introduce the newly developed 22 megawatt offshore reference wind turbine designed within the International Energy Agency Wind Technology Commercialization Programme Task 55 Reference Wind Turbines and Plants. The turbine was designed collaboratively by two teams at the Denmark Technical University and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Reference turbines serve an important purpose in the wind energy community, since they provide openly available data for models representative of current wind turbine technology, which can be used by practitioners for a variety of modeling purposes, ranging from aerodynamic, structural, and aeroelastic turbine modeling to wind farm flow modeling, across a range of fidelities. The IEA 22 RWT aims to model machines with projected installation in the 2025-2030 time frame. The turbine has a rotor diameter of 284 meters and a hub height of 170 meters. It is a class 1-B machine with a rotor specific power nearing 350 W m-2 and it is mounted on either a fixed-bottom offshore foundation or a semi-submersible floating platform.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Flow Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) Wind Plant Power Production Data Sets

This dataset contains turbine- and plant-level power outputs for 252,500 cases of diverse wind plant layouts operating under a wide range of yawing and atmospheric conditions. The power outputs were computed using the Gaussian wake model in NREL's FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) model, version 2.3.0. The 252,500 cases include 500 unique wind plants generated randomly by a specialized Plant Layout Generator (PLayGen) that samples randomized realizations of wind plant layouts from one of four canonical configurations: (i) cluster, (ii) single string, (iii) multiple string, (iv) parallel string. Other wind plant layout parameters were also randomly sampled, including the number of turbines (25-200) and the mean turbine spacing (3D-10D, where D denotes the turbine rotor diameter). For each layout, 500 different sets of atmospheric conditions were randomly sampled. These include wind speed in 0-25 m/s, wind direction in 0 deg.-360 deg., and turbulence intensity chosen from low (6%), medium (8%), and high (10%). For each atmospheric inflow scenario, the individual turbine yaw angles were randomly sampled from a one-sided truncated Gaussian on the interval 0 deg.-30 deg. oriented relative to wind inflow direction. This random data is supplemented with a collection of yaw-optimized samples where FLORIS was used to determine turbine yaw angles that maximize power production for the entire plant. To generate this data, a subset of cases were selected (50 atmospheric conditions from 50 layouts each for a total of additional 2,500 cases) for which FLORIS was re-run with wake steering control optimization. The IEA onshore reference turbine, which has a 130 m rotor diameter, a 110 m hub height, and a rated power capacity of 3.4 MW was used as the turbine for all simulations. The simulations were performed using NREL's Eagle high performance computing system in February 2021 as part of the Spatial Analysis for Wind Technology Development project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office. The data was collected, reformatted, and preprocessed for this OEDI submission in May 2023 under the Foundational AI for Wind Energy project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office. This dataset is intended to serve as a benchmark against which new artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) tools may be tested. Baseline AI/ML methods for analyzing this dataset have been implemented, and a link to their repository containing those models has been provided. The .h5 data file structure can be found in the GitHub repository under explore_wind_plant_data_h5.ipynb.

AI↗
DOE OSTI2018

Offshore Wind Resource, Cost, and Economic Potential in the State of Maine

This report provides information for decision-makers about floating offshore wind technologies in the state of Maine. It summarizes research efforts performed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory between 2015 and 2017 to analyze the resource potential, cost of offshore wind, and economic potential of offshore wind from four primary reports: Musial et al. (2016); Beiter et al. (2016, 2017); and Mone et al. (unpublished). From Musial et al. (2016), Maine's technical offshore wind resource potential ranked seventh in the nation overall with more than 411 terawatt-hours/year of offshore resource generating potential. Although 90% of this wind resource is greater than 9.0-meters-per-second average velocity, most of the resource is over deep water, where floating wind technology is needed. Levelized cost of energy and levelized avoided cost of energy were computed to estimate the unsubsidized 'economic potential' for Maine in the year 2027 (Beiter et al. 2016, 2017). The studies found that Maine may have 65 gigawatts of economic potential by 2027, the highest of any U.S. state. Bottom-line costs for the Aqua Ventus project, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Demonstration project, were released from a proprietary report written by NREL in 2016 for the University of Maine (Mone et al. unpublished). The report findings were that economies of scale and new technology advancements lowered the cost from $300/megawatt-hour (MWh) for the two-turbine 12-megawatt (MW) Aqua Ventus 1 project, to $126/MWh for the commercial-scale, 498-MW Aqua Ventus-2 project. Further cost reductions to $77/MWh were found when new technology advancements were applied for the 1,000-MW Aqua Ventus-3 project in 2030. No new analysis was conducted for this report.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1990

Supersonic wind tunnel nozzles: A selected, annotated bibliography to aid in the development of quiet wind tunnel technology

This bibliography, with abstracts, consists of 298 citations arranged in chronological order. The citations were selected to be helpful to persons engaged in the design and development of quiet (low disturbance) nozzles for modern supersonic wind tunnels. Author, subject, and corporate source indexes are included to assist with the location of specific information.

Wolf, Stephen W. D.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Wind Energy Technologies Office Multi-Year Program Plan Fiscal Years 2021—2025

WETO's Multi-Year Program Plan outlines the Office’s research priorities and plans through the year 2025. With the objectives of reducing the cost of wind energy, enabling the integration of substantial amounts of wind energy into the evolving national energy system, and creating siting and environmental solutions to reduce environmental impacts, the Plan provides insight into DOE’s wind energy research priorities, and will guide planning and execution of future R&D activities. It is organized in six sections: offshore wind, land-based wind, distributed wind, systems integration, modeling and analysis, and crosscutting initiatives.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Aerodynamic Characterization of 3D Scanned Wind Turbine Blades Using Experimental and Computational Methods

This study presents an aerodynamic characterization of 3D scanned wind turbine blades using both experimental and computational methods. The research was conducted by Gulf Wind Technology and Sandia National Laboratories. The primary objective was to investigate the aerodynamic impacts of leading-edge manufacturing defects on wind turbine blades. The study utilized the Stratasys NEO 800 3D Printer for high-precision manufacturing and the GWT Accelerator Wind Tunnel for experimental testing. Computational simulations were performed using COMSOL Multiphysics to model the wind tunnel and analyze flow characteristics and OpenFOAM to study the aerodynamic impacts of leading-edge defects. OpenFAST was used to estimate how these defects can lead to revenue losses for wind farm operators as high as 6%. The results demonstrated significant aerodynamic performance variations due to defects, with detailed analysis provided through wind tunnel and CFD data. The findings contribute to the understanding of defect impacts on wind turbine blade performance and offer insights for future design improvements.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2007

The Development of Modal Testing Technology for Wind Turbines: A Historical Perspective

Wind turbines are very large, flexible structures, with aerodynamic forces on the rotating blades producing periodic forces with frequencies at the harmonics of the rotation frequency. Due to design consideration, these rotational frequencies are comparable to the modal frequencies; thus avoiding resonant conditions is a critical consideration. Consequently, predicting and experimentally validating the modal frequencies of wind turbines has been important to their successful design and operation. Performing modal tests on flexible structures over 120 meters tall is a substantial challenge, which has inspired innovative developments in modal test technology. A further trial to the analyst and experimentalist is that the modal frequencies are dependent on the turbine rotation speed, so testing a parked turbine does not fully validate the analytical predictions. The history and development of this modal testing technology will be reviewed, showing historical tests and techniques, ranging from two-meter to 100-meter turbines for both parked and rotating tests. The NExT (Natural Excitation Technique) was developed in the 1990's, as a predecessor to OMA to overcome these challenges. We will trace the difficulties and successes of wind turbine modal testing over the past twenty-five years from 1982 to the present.

James, George H., III↗
DOE OSTI2015

Structural Testing at the NWTC Helps Improve Blade Design and Increase System Reliability; NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Since 1990, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL's) National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) has tested more than 150 wind turbine blades. NWTC researchers can test full-scale and subcomponent articles, conduct data analyses, and provide engineering expertise on best design practices. Structural testing of wind turbine blades enables designers, manufacturers, and owners to validate designs and assess structural performance to specific load conditions. Rigorous structural testing can reveal design and manufacturing problems at an early stage of development that can lead to overall improvements in design and increase system reliability.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Structural Testing at the NWTC Helps Improve Blade Design and Increase System Reliability

Since 1990, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) has tested more than 150 wind turbine blades. NWTC researchers can test full-scale and subcomponent articles, conduct data analyses, and provide engineering expertise on best design practices. Structural testing of wind turbine blades enables designers, manufacturers, and owners to validate designs and assess structural performance to specific load conditions. Rigorous structural testing can reveal design and manufacturing problems at an early stage of development that can lead to overall improvements in design and increase system reliability.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Distributed Wind: Supporting the Clean Energy Transition

Distributed wind technologies have advanced a great deal over the last decade, developing from a very selective market to one that is poised to play a significant role in supporting a clean energy transition. Summarizing technical and modeling advances, most of them supported by program efforts undertaken by the Wind Energy Technology Office of the U.S. Department of Energy, this presentation provides an overview of the current state of distributed wind technologies and how the technology could support the wider distributed energy development. The presentation also provides an short introduction to the challenges and ongoing research to address these challenges.

distributed energy↗
DOE OSTI2024

Incorporating Wind Turbine Choice in High-Resolution Geospatial Supply Curve and Capacity Expansion Models

To achieve national decarbonization goals, U.S. annual deployment of wind energy will need to increase by at least fivefold compared to the recent past. Modeling and analysis frameworks can help inform where and how wind energy deployment might occur and thereby help enable the achievement of decarbonization goals. However, most prior wind energy modeling and analysis studies rely on generalized representations of wind energy technologies. Since wind energy technology advancements are expected to increase the competitiveness of wind energy, it is important to incorporate more detailed representations of turbine technology into wind energy modeling. Here we present a new method that incorporates wind turbine choice into the technology representation of land-based wind energy in long-term planning models. Our method integrates three previously published modeling and analysis capabilities: 1) bottom-up cost modeling to estimate future technology costs, 2) geospatial modeling to represent siting decisions, and 3) power sector modeling to evaluate potential deployment. We refer to this approach as a "customized turbine choice" methodology because it creates a composite turbine scenario by choosing from multiple wind turbine technologies—using site-specific optimized turbine layout and selecting the least-cost technology at each location. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new modeling pipeline by examining how the selection of four different wind turbine configurations might evolve from 2021 through 2040. Our results show that using our customized turbine choice methodology could lead to higher estimates for wind future deployment, which indicates that more simplified modeling might underestimate the role that wind energy could play in meeting decarbonization goals. Future research is needed to further explore the implications of turbine choice and to better inform technology researchers, original equipment manufacturers, and other wind industry stakeholders about the market potential of different wind turbine technologies.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Definition of the IEA Wind 22-Megawatt Offshore Reference Wind Turbine

This technical report describes the design of a new 22 Megawatt reference wind turbine (RWT). The turbine model was designed collaboratively by two teams at the Denmark Technical University and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory within the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Technology Commercialization Programme (TCP) Task 55 on Reference Wind Turbines and Farms. RWTs serve an important purpose in the wind energy community, since they provide openly available data for models representative of current wind turbine technology, which can be used by practitioners for a variety of modeling purposes, ranging from aerodynamic, structural, and aeroelastic turbine modeling to wind farm flow modeling, across a range of fidelities. The IEA 22 RWT aims to model machines with projected installation in the 2025-2030 time frame. The turbine has a rotor diameter of 284 meters and a hub height of 170 meters. It is a class 1-B machine with a rotor specific power nearing 350 W m -2 and it is mounted on either a fixed-bottom offshore foundation or a semi-submersible floating platform.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Type 5 Wind Turbine Technology: How Synchronised, Synchronous Generation Avoids Uncertainties About Inverter Interoperability under IEEE 2800:2022

Degradation of system strength because of inverter-based resources (IBRs) is a major concern facing the zero-carbon transition. A new standard released this year, IEEE Standard 2800, attempts to codify the relationship between IBRs and the Transmission System Operator (TSO). It is apparent from IEEE 2800:2022 that there remain fundamental problems with quantifying whether source impedance (the measure of "system strength" with which the standard is concerned) will present a problem for allowing an IBR to connect. This is "because of complex interdependencies between IBR and power system characteristics". So developers are increasingly required to adopt mitigation options such as adding synchronous condensers or curtailing IBRs. A proven Type 5 (synchronous) wind turbine exists and has been running at 0.5 MW scale in a 46 MW wind farm in New Zealand since 2006 and eight turbines in Scotland since 2013. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is conducting a study of the impacts on grid reliability, stability, and resilience of Type 5 wind turbines. The project has both simulation and testing tasks and will result in proposing a variable generation solution that will help system operators and utilities address all reliability and most resilience challenges in the evolving grid.

grid stability↗
DOE OSTI2025

Leveraging System Dynamics to Predict the Commercialization Success of Emerging Energy Technologies: Lessons from Wind Energy

The United States urgently needs to tackle the climate crisis while enhancing energy security and resiliency. The complexity of the U.S. energy system, with its interconnected elements, makes predicting future states challenging, especially with the introduction of novel energy systems like wind, solar, clean hydrogen, and advanced nuclear technologies. Modern systems engineering methods and tools can provide deeper insights into these dynamics and future behaviors. This research aims to develop a comprehensive model that captures the main elements and behaviors of new energy technologies within the existing energy system. We hypothesized that the market uptake of novel energy systems is influenced by multiple diverse factors, such as technological learning, availability of resources, and economic incentives; examined the history of electricity generation using land-based wind technologies; and developed a system dynamics model to investigate the relationships between capacity growth and influencing factors, both internal and external. The developed model yielded outcomes that confirmed the hypothesized dynamics of wind energy system diffusion through a quantitative comparison of installed capacity and highlighted the significant influence of resource availability, federal incentives (production tax credits), and technological learning on capacity growth and cost reduction. This research aims to support informed decision-making for investments in novel energy systems and aid in developing effective policies for technology deployment.

17 WIND ENERGY↗