The Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) works with industry partners to increase the performance and reliability of next-generation wind technologies while lowering the cost of wind energy. The office's research efforts have helped to increase the average capacity factor (a measure of power plant productivity) from 22% for wind turbines installed before to an average of nearly 35% today, up from 30% in . Wind energy costs have been reduced from over 55 cents (current dollars) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in to an average of under 3 cents per kWh in the United States today. To ensure future industry growth, wind industry technology must continue to evolve, building on earlier successes to further improve reliability, increase capacity factors, and reduce costs. This page describes the goal of WETO's utility-scale wind technology research efforts and highlights some of its recent projects.
Please visit our website for more information on this topic.
Wind energy technologies available for licensing from U.S. Department of Energy laboratories and participating research institutions can be found on the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Energy Innovation Portal. View all WETO next-generation technologies research and development projects by visiting the WETO Projects Map and selecting Program Area: Next-Generation Technology Development and Manufacturing.
Modern wind turbines are increasingly cost-effective and more reliable, and have scaled up in size to multi-megawatt power ratings. Since , the average turbine generating capacity has increased, with turbines installed in averaging 2.15 MW of capacity. WETO research has helped facilitate this transition, through the development of longer, lighter rotor blades, taller towers, more reliable drivetrains, and performance-optimizing control systems.
During the past two decades, the office has worked with industry to develop a number of prototype technologies, many of which have become commercially viable products. One example is the GE Wind Energy 1.5-megawatt (MW) wind turbine. Since the early s, the program worked with GE and its predecessors to test components such as blades, generators, and control systems on generations of turbine designs that led to GE's 1.5-MW model, which has constituted approximately half of the nation's installed commercial wind energy fleet and is a major competitor in global markets.
WETO worked with industry partners to improve the performance and reliability of system components. Knight and Carver's Wind Blade Division in National City, California, worked with researchers at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories to develop an innovative wind turbine blade that has led to an increase in energy capture by 12% The most distinctive characteristic of the Sweep Twist Adaptive Rotor (STAR) blade is a gently curved tip, which, unlike the vast majority of blades in use, is specially designed to take maximum advantage of all wind speeds, including slower speeds.
New Energy Era supply professional and honest service.
More recently, to support the development of more reliable gearboxes, the program has worked with several companies to design and test innovative drivetrain concepts. Through the support of $47 million in DOE funding, the nation's largest and one of the world's most advanced wind energy testing facilities was opened at Clemson University to help speed the deployment of next- generation energy technology, reduce costs for manufacturers, and boost global competitiveness for American companies.
Highlighted Project: Innovation in the design and manufacturing of wind power generation components continues to be critical to achieving our national goals. As a result of this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office and Advanced Manufacturing Office are partnering with public and private organizations to apply additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, to the production of wind turbine blade molds. The traditional method of blade design requires the creation of a plug, or a full size representation of the final blade, which is then used to make the mold. Creating the plug is one of the most time-intensive and labor intensive processes in wind blade construction, so 3D printing saves these critical resources.
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of , worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 121.2 gigawatts (GW). Wind power produces about 1.5% of worldwide electricity use, and is growing rapidly, having doubled in the three years between and . Several countries have achieved relatively high levels of wind power penetration, such as 19% of stationary electricity production in Denmark, 11% in Spain and Portugal, and 7% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland in . As of May , eighty countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis.
Large-scale wind farms are connected to the electric power transmission network. Smaller turbines are used to provide electricity to isolated locations. Utility companies increasingly buy back surplus electricity produced by small domestic turbines. Wind energy as a power source is attractive as an alternative to fossil fuels, because it is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions; however, the construction of wind farms (as with other forms of power generation) is not universally welcomed due to their visual impact and other effects on the environment.
Wind power is non-dispatchable, meaning that for economic operation all of the available output must be taken when it is available, and other resources, such as hydropower, and standard load management techniques must be used to match supply with demand. The intermittency of wind seldom creates problems when using wind power to supply a low proportion of total demand. Where wind is to be used for a moderate fraction of demand, additional costs for compensation of intermittency are considered to be modest.
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Latest Wind Energy News.