Call for Teams to Compete in the 2022 Collegiate Wind Competition

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Wind Energy Technologies Office

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September 3, 2020

Catch the Wind: September 2020

In This Issue

Continue to follow the Wind Energy Technologies Office for the latest news, events, and updates.


News

Application Process Officially Open for the 2022 Collegiate Wind Competition

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has just released a request for proposals for student teams interested in competing in the Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC) in May of 2022. The competition challenges students to design, build, and test a model wind turbine and plan and financially analyze a wind power plant. The request for proposals is open for applications through December 8, 2020. Interested students and faculty can learn more about the competition and the application requirements.

A man adjusts a model wind turbine in a wind tunnel.

­­­­­­New Study Reviews Additive Manufacturing of Soft Magnets for Wind Turbines

DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in collaboration with NREL, has published a new study that highlights the current status of additive manufacturing (AM) of magnetic components such as rotors and stators for large electrical machines. Modern wind turbine generators are large, complex, electrical machines that can benefit from advanced lightweight materials and manufacturing as they increase in size and efficiency. The layer-by-layer 3D printing process of additive manufacturing opens up new opportunities by being able to print complex shapes, reducing the number of parts and production lead time, and reducing use of expensive critical materials such as rare-earth magnets as well as nanocrystalline and amorphous soft magnetic composites.

The study also discusses AM process selection guidelines, hybrid printing technologies, and the associated opportunities and challenges. This work is part of the Manufacturing and Additive Design of Electric machines enabled by 3D printing (MADE3D) initiative.

U.S. Distributed Wind Manufacturers Selected to Advance Wind Technologies and Grid Support Capabilities through DOE Competitiveness Improvement Project

NREL, with funding from the Wind Energy Technologies Office, works with dozens of small businesses across the United States to advance wind technology as a distributed energy resource through the Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP). On August 11, DOE announced eight new CIP projects that will make distributed wind energy more cost competitive, improve its interoperability with other distributed energy resources, and increase the number of small and mid-scale wind turbine designs certified to national testing standards. The projects selected through the most recent CIP solicitation continue the trends of developing turbines with larger rotors and advanced controls integrated with energy storage.

CWC Alum Goes Far with Passion for Renewable Energy

A young woman wearing a black graduation cap, stands on a field of dry grass with mountains and clouds behind her.

As an undergrad at Northern Arizona University (NAU), Jayne Sandoval completed internships all over the United States and even spent a year studying in China.  And yet, she credits her participation in the 2020 DOE Collegiate Wind Competition with helping her land a summer internship with an independent power producer based in Salt Lake City.

She graduated from NAU in May with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Comparative Cultural Studies and this fall, she’ll begin a Master of Science in Energy Engineering at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan through the Fulbright Scholar Program.

Ultimately, Sandoval wants to build knowledge and connections that she can use to help improve quality of life on the Navajo reservation where she grew up.


Events

AWEA Wind Project Siting and Environmental Compliance Conference 2020

September 30–October 2, 2020

WETO and National Laboratory researchers plan to participate in the AWEA Wind Project Siting and Environmental Compliance Conference. This online conference lends itself to showcase DOE-funded R&D to better understand and mitigate wind’s impacts on wildlife and air traffic, weather and defense radars, and community siting.


In Case You Missed It

ARIES — a Visionary Energy Research Platform Addressing At-Scale Integration of Energy Systems

On August 12, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette announced the launch of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform at NREL. ARIES is a cutting-edge research platform that will allow NREL researchers and the scientific community to address the fundamental challenges of integrated energy systems at scale.

ARIES represents a substantial scale-up in experimentation capability from existing research platforms, allowing for research at the 20MW level. It will make it possible to understand the impact and get the most value from the millions of new devices—such as electric vehicles, renewable generation, hydrogen, energy storage, and grid-interactive efficient buildings —that are being connected to the grid daily.

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