US DOE Grants $28 Million For Wind Energy R&D

The US DOE has announced the selection of 13 projects to receive a total of USD 28 million to advance R&D in wind energy nationwide.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of 13 projects to receive a total of USD 28 million to advance research and development (R&D) in wind energy nationwide. While utility-scale, land-based wind energy in the United States has grown to 96 gigawatts, significant opportunities for cost reductions remain, especially in the areas of offshore wind, distributed wind, and tall wind.

The selected projects span the technology development spectrum including testing, demonstration, integration, and technical assistance and cover all three wind energy sectors: distributed, offshore, and land-based utility-scale wind.

Four Wind Innovations for Rural Economic Development (WIRED) projects will receive a total of USD 6 million in federal funding to support rural electric utilities by developing technology to integrate wind with other distributed energy resources, and by simplifying distributed wind energy project development through standardised solutions and technical assistance.

• Bergey WindPower of Norman, Oklahoma will develop a standardised distributed wind/battery/generator micro-grid system that rural utilities can provide to rural homes and businesses to deliver resilience, energy savings, and reliable power.
• Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of Palo Alto, California will develop novel modeling, planning, and operation methods for deploying and operating wind energy and battery storage technologies that allow increased wind energy while maintaining rural grid reliability.
• Iowa State University of Ames, Iowa will design optimisation models and control algorithms that help rural utilities leverage distributed wind in coordination with other distributed energy resources such as battery storage and solar PV.
• The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association of Arlington, Virginia will provide technical assistance and develop standardised wind engineering solutions, metrics, case studies, best practices, and finance models to help rural cooperatives cost-effectively adopt distributed wind.

Two offshore wind technology demonstration projects will receive up to a total of USD 10 million to conduct additional project development activities that enable demonstration of innovative technologies or methodologies to reduce offshore wind energy risk and cost.

• The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio will use state-of-the-art sensing technologies to characterize the activity of birds near their project site in Lake Erie.
• The University of Maine at Orono will develop an alternative floating substructure design for a 10–12 MW wind turbine in place of the currently planned two 6-MW turbines floating offshore wind demonstration project planned for deployment off Monhegan Island, Maine.

One project will receive up to USD 5 million to validate manufacturing innovations and demonstrate cost-effective tall tower technology. The Keystone Tower Systems of Westminster, Colorado will demonstrate on-site spiral welding of a 160-meter wind turbine tower, as well as installation of up-tower components with a tower-mounted self-hoisting crane.

Additionally, six projects will receive a total of USD 7 million to conduct testing in support of innovative offshore wind research and development utilising existing national-level testing facilities.