Mexican Multinational Laboratory Sandia Labs Reimagines Wind Turbine Designs

Brandon Ennis, the technical lead for offshore wind at Sandia National Laboratories has claimed to have designed a new concept that looks to change in the installations of turbines in the offshore wind farms. Sandia Labs is a multinational laboratory based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Sandia Labs had filed for the patent for the design by Ennis in 2020. In the revolutionary concept, the developers could now place a wind turbine’s generator on a floating platform. This eliminates the need to put it at the top of the wind tower which is usually 500 feet tall.

The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Sandia Labs said that this design also required a software tool that could get the Ennis design to work. This would help engineers to certify the wind turbines to the right design standards that would be adept at the changing wind and sea conditions.

Ennis said, “To design our floating wind turbine system, we needed a design tool that can simulate the wind, waves, blade elasticity, platform motion and the controllers.” He said that his design for offshore wind replaces the traditional vertical tower with tensioned cables that can be adjusted to the conditions. He further informed, “To design our floating wind turbine system, we needed a design tool that can simulate the wind, waves, blade elasticity, platform motion and the controllers.”

According to the Sandia Labs, the novel software will now allow development of lighter and cheaper offshore wind turbines. The lab states that the offshore wind in the U.S. blows across water more than 200-feet deep. Hence, it is not advisable to build rigid structures that are found in traditional turbines. Now, the new design of Sandia Labs that has vertical-axis catches wind and energy from every direction. But the structure is still not fully protected from damaging winds of the seas. In this scenario, Sandia solved this challenge by replacing a vertical tower with tensioned cables that can be adjusted to the conditions in the seas.

Ennis stated, “For us, the question becomes how do we remove mass and cost from the system while maximizing energy capture, which is where we got our innovative, towerless, vertical-axis design.” Sandia Labs is mulling over a completely optimized design for the floating wind turbine by the end of 2022.