Wind Energy

Wind Plant Benchmark, Availability Time Accounting.

Sandia’s Wind Energy Technologies program conducts applied research to increase the viability of wind technology by improving wind turbine performance, reliability, and reducing the cost of energy. Sandia specializes in all aspects of wind-turbine blade design, manufacturing, and system reliability.

By partnering with universities and industry, Sandia works to advance the state of knowledge in materials, structurally efficient airfoil designs, active-flow aerodynamic controls, and sensors. Researchers at the Labs are investigating integrated blade designs where airfoil choice, blade platform, materials, manufacturing process, and embedded controls are all considered in a system perspective. Sandia works with operators, developers, and manufacturers to help document and evaluate known reliability problems and develop tools and methods to anticipate and investigate future reliability issues.

Highlights:

CREW (Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind), a DOE-funded national reliability database that enables the analysis of wind plant operations, has published its 2012 benchmark.

Presentations from the 2012 Wind Turbine Blade Workshop are now available online.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) are developing the Scaled WInd Farm Technology (SWIFT) facility, hosted at Texas Tech University, to enable rapid, cost-efficient testing and development of transformative wind energy technology.