The US Department of Energy's (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) has announced plans to invest $5.1 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in research and technology development to advance modelling and analysis for next-generation offshore wind turbine blades.
To effectively design new offshore wind turbine blades, engineers need to gather aerodynamic data that will help assess how a wind turbine blade responds in all weather conditions. As wind turbines become larger, gathering that data becomes challenging due to the large scale (>10 MW) of modern offshore wind turbines.
This future funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is anticipated to seek applications to fill critical gaps in the development of multi-megawatt wind turbines (>10 MW) for offshore wind deployment and adoption of sustainable wind turbine technologies across the United States. The goals of this proposed FOA would be to:
- Collect and disseminate benchmark aerodynamic data to inform the design of large next-generation wind turbine airfoils and blades.
- Develop and validate improved modelling and simulation tools for the behaviour of idling or stationary blades for large-scale wind turbines.
- Provide the wind industry with accurate models to minimise the risks of developing and deploying large offshore wind turbines.
This FOA is expected to be released in Spring 2024.
