Did You Know?

WETO works with industry partners to increase the performance and reliability of next-generation wind technologies while lowering the cost of wind energy. Check out our website to learn how we support the continued evolution of wind energy technology.

Nader Samaan is a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) electrical engineer who supports the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office by helping grid operators understand the variability and uncertainty of wind power. He also co-authors the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal papers on wind capacity value and wind power plant short circuit contributions—with more than 600 citations, the task isn’t exactly a breeze.

When asked for his favorite wind energy fact, Samaan provided a compelling anecdote from his experience prior to working for PNNL. He had been doing integration interconnect studies for one of the first wind projects in the Pacific Northwest and after he moved to PNNL, he realized one day that he was driving past wind farms he’d help simulate. Samaan helps us remember that, while it might not always feel like it day-to-day, our work in the wind industry is always steadily towering around us! Head over to PNNL’s website to learn more.

The Departments of Energy, the Interior, Commerce, and Transportation just launched ambitious initiatives to position the U.S. to lead the world on floating offshore wind design, development, manufacturing, and deployment. This included the Floating Offshore Wind Shot, a goal to deploy 15 GW of floating offshore wind by 2035, and close to $50 million in R&D funding.

Now it’s time to hear more from agency experts about those efforts and next steps. Join representatives from DOE and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a webinar on Wednesday, Sep. 28, at 3:30 pm ET. Register to attend.

Opportunities and Challenges on the Path to 100% Clean Energy

The goal is to reach 100% clean electricity—a power grid that produces net-zero greenhouse gas emissions—by 2035. The future of clean energy is looking bright, but how will we get there? With goals this crucial and monumental, it’s important to ask the right questions and identify feasible solutions, which is exactly what the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has done with its newly released study.

While there are multiple routes that could lead us to net-zero, NREL found that wind energy will consistently play a key role in meeting this goal. Every presented scenario highlights the need for a rapid increase of new clean energy technology deployment, with wind and solar energy providing 60%–80% of electricity generation. This means America needs to produce more than 70 gigawatts of wind energy per year by the end of this decade—that’s more than five times the current annual deployment level of 13.4 gigawatts.

Learn more about the challenges and opportunities facing the clean energy industry in reaching net-zero by 2035 by reading the full report.

New Community Clean Energy Coalition Prize Helps Implement Justice40 Initiative

Want to make real change in your community while helping execute the goals of the White House’s Justice40 Initiative? Apply for DOE’s new Clean Energy Coalition Prize, with a total prize pool of $1.5 million available!

The goal of the prize is to encourage community coalitions—made up of nonprofits, city governments, school systems, and other community organizations—to come together to develop a strategy to address a local clean energy opportunity or inequity. Strategies may include student education, workforce trainings, or implementation of new technologies that help direct funding to underserved communities. Learn more about how your community can get involved.