Nick Johnson

Nick Johnson

Wind Technology and Design Manager

Biography

Nick Johnson is the manager of Sandia’s Wind Energy Design and Experimentation Department. Research under his portfolio includes maintaining the Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility in Lubbock, Texas, which demonstrates and tests new rotor designs, improves understanding of turbine to turbine wake interference, and validates models used to represent wind farm physics at varying levels of fidelity. Other key research includes rotor optimization, blade reliability, and radar interference mitigation.

Nick arrived at Sandia in May 2022, and previously was a senior research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the Wind Program. His area of expertise was in aeroelastic analysis, optimization, and blade design. This included techno-economic and system level analysis, and optimization of innovative blade designs. His past research efforts include the development and integration of beam structural models for wind blade analysis. Before working at NREL, he was a project manager and project engineer for the Loads and Controls team at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy. His team focused on new project development for the onshore section of the company. Nick also worked at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office in a variety of roles, including technology manager for a large portion of the A2e related portfolio.

Nick holds an master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado – Denver.