Sandia’s Energy Program has won two awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer’s (FLC’s) Far West Region for its work to develop and commercialize innovative technologies. The FLC is a nationwide network of ~300 federal laboratories and centers that provides a forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking laboratory mission technologies and [...]
Representatives from the federal agencies participating in the Wind Turbine Radar Interference Mitigation (WTRIM) Working Group held a special Government-Industry Radar/Airspace Listening Session at the American Wind Energy Association AWEA WindPower 2015 event in Orlando, Florida. The event was well attended by more than 50 persons (other than the panel members). The panel consisted of [...]
Large-eddy simulation (LES) of wind farms with wind-turbine parameterization is emerging as a powerful tool for improving existing wind farm performance and lowering maintenance costs—and assessing the potential sites for installing wind farms. Sandia is working with the University of Minnesota (UMN) St. Anthony Falls Laboratory to document and prepare UMN’s offshore version of the [...]
Wind-turbine blades pose a unique set of inspection challenges: from very thick and attentive spar-cap structures to porous bond lines, varying core material, and a multitude of manufacturing defects of interest. The need for viable, accurate, nondestructive inspection (NDI) technology becomes more important as the cost per blade—and lost revenue from downtime—grows. Under its Blade [...]
Offshore wind energy could potentially play a significant role in helping the nation establish a diversified energy-generation portfolio composed of clean, renewable resources. A current obstacle to offshore wind energy is that most projections put offshore wind farm operations and maintenance (O&M) costs between 2 to 5 times the current average O&M costs for onshore [...]
