Making it easier for businesses, farmers, homeowners, and communities to turn this opportunity into on-site energy, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has launched the new National Distributed Wind Network and complementary Distributed Wind Energy Resource Hub.
Created in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO), these resources are designed to provide people interested in installing distributed wind turbines with the information, tools, and connections they need to generate their electricity near where it will be used.
An initial focus of the National Distributed Wind Network will be to support the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) and DOE’s new Rural and Agricultural Income and Savings from Renewable Energy (RAISE) Initiative, which is focused on helping farmers cut costs and increase income from clean energy. Through RAISE, the USDA has set an initial goal of helping 400 individual farmers deploy smaller-scale wind projects using the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program funding.
A primary feature of the National Distributed Wind Network is the Distributed Wind Energy Resource Hub. Another NREL/PNNL collaboration, the resource hub is hosted on WETO’s WINDExchange community resource platform and includes:
- General information about distributed wind energy
- Project funding and technical assistance opportunities
- Case studies of successful distributed wind energy projects
- Models, tools, and toolkits to help users assess their location for distributed wind energy
