U.S. government funds two test facilities for wind turbine blades
WASHINGTON, DC, USA, July 4, 2007. The U.S. Department of Energy will invest US$4 million to develop large-scale wind blade test facilities in two states.
Blade testing is required to meet turbine design standards, reduce machine cost and reduce the technical and financial risk of deploying mass-produced wind turbine models, explains the DOE. Rapid growth in wind turbine size over the past two decades has outgrown the existing capabilities of the National Wind Technology Center at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which operates the only blade test facility in North America capable of performing full-scale testing of megawatt-scale turbine blades.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Partnership and the Lone Star Wind Alliance will each receive up to $2 million in test equipment to develop the facilities in Boston, Massachusetts, and Ingleside, Texas, near Corpus Christi. The two consortia will negotiate cooperative research and develop agreements with NREL to design, build and operate the new facilities, which are expected to be operational in 2009.
NREL says a key factor in choosing the new sites was their access to waterways: the Boston site is the Boston Autoport in Boston Harbour which provides proximity to offshore wind resources, truck access, a rail spur and a 365 m dock for transporting blades from ocean going vessels; while the Ingleside site has access to the Gulf of Mexico and has potential to dramatically lower transportation costs.
The goal of the testing facilities is to test blades up to 100 m long. Although NREL's test facility for turbine blades will remain in operation, the two new test facilities will be able to handle longer wind turbine blades.
The total investment for each facility will be $20 million. The Massachusetts partnership has pledged $13 million in grants and loans for construction and startup costs, and has established reserve funding of $5 million for future blade design research and testing. The Lone Star Wind Alliance has pledged $18 million from state and private sources for initial capital and startup costs.
“These two testing facilities represent an important next step in the expansion of competitiveness of the U.S. domestic wind energy industry,” says federal energy secretary Samuel Bodman. “We congratulate Massachusetts and Texas for their outstanding proposals, and we believe this work will build upon the Administration’s goal of prompting states to research, develop and deploy more clean energy technologies.”
The investment from DOE is subject to Congressional appropriations. Six applications for funding were received from partnerships, and were reviewed by a technical panel comprised of DOE national laboratory and wind industry energy experts.
The Massachusetts partnership includes the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development, Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs, and the Massachusetts Port Authority. The Texas partnership includes the University of Houston, Texas General Land Office, Texas Workforce Commission, Texas State Energy Conservation Office, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, University of Texas - Austin, West Texas A&M University, Montana State University, Stanford University, New Mexico State University, Old Dominion University, Houston Advanced Research Center, BP, DOW, Huntsman, and Shell Wind.
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