Wind Energy Technologies Office
March 19, 2019
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of nine projects that will catalyze technical and operational solutions to reduce environmental compliance costs and environmental impacts of land-based and offshore wind. DOE is providing a total of over $6 million for these projects, with cost-share from project partners bringing the total value of the projects to $9 million. Read the Progress Alert.
Events
American Wind Energy Association Wind Project Siting and Environmental Compliance Conference
DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) will be exhibiting alongside DOE national laboratories at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Siting and Environmental Compliance Conference March 26–28, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you’re attending the conference, stop by the DOE booths to learn about community siting resources and information, as well as DOE-funded R&D and tools to better understand and mitigate wind’s impacts on wildlife and air traffic, weather, and defense radars.
Live demonstrations of tools and resources at DOE booth:
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DOE-Berkeley Lab-USGS U.S. Wind Turbine Database, 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 26
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Technology Development and Innovation (TD&I) project, 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 27
- Tethys online database and Map Viewer of offshore environmental impacts research, 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, March 27
- NREL slideshow of turbine air pressure modeling that suggests pressure changes around turbine blades likely do not pose a large risk to bats, 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 27
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory demonstration of ThermalTracker open source software to quantify presence and behavior of animals near offshore wind, 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 27
- Sandia National Laboratories demonstration of NEXRAD screening tool for wind–radar conflicts, 3 p.m., Wednesday, March 27
- Sandia demonstration of radar mitigation tool validation tests taking place at Travis Air Force Base, and overview of the Wind Turbine Interference Mitigation Working Group, 3:15 p.m., Wednesday, March 27
- DOE WINDExchange website, 10 a.m., Thursday, March 28
WETO’s Market Acceleration and Deployment Program Manager Jocelyn Brown-Saracino will speak alongside industry leaders about DOE-funded R&D on technologies to deter wildlife from wind plants in a session titled This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Research Program: Let’s Find Solutions!, 10:15–11:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 27.
In Case You Missed It
The U.S. Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB), a continuously updated data portal containing the locations and attributes of all wind turbines across the country, reached 1.4 million page views in its first 11 months! WETO launched the database in April 2018 in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), AWEA, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. From the USWTDB website, users can download these data in various formats and view and query the data from the online map viewer. And, as of March 2019, the database can now be pinged using Application Protocol Interface or "API" functionality, meaning users can collect info from and query the database directly. This means the data's broad appeal to a variety of users including government, industry, the general public, and international users will only increase. Launch the Viewer.
Join USGS for a webinar on how to use the USWTDB's new API capability and how to bring data into Excel and other applications, Tuesday, March 19, 1–1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Register for the webinar.
NREL has issued a request for proposal (RFP) and is accepting applications for the Competitiveness Improvement Project. The Competitiveness Improvement Project is supported by WETO in alignment with the office’s goals to make wind energy cost competitive with other distributed energy resources, improve interoperability with other distributed energy resources, and increase the number of wind turbine designs certified to national testing standards. Through the Competitiveness Improvement Project, NREL intends to award cost-shared subcontracts and technical support to:
- Develop wind turbine system designs optimized for maximum energy production and grid support in distributed applications
- Develop advanced manufacturing processes to reduce hardware costs
- Conduct turbine and component testing to national standards to verify system performance and safety.
Applications are due March 29, 2019.
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