ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories will hold its biennial Wind Turbine Reliability Workshop, Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 2-3, 8 a.m. -5 p.m. at the Marriott Pyramid North in Albuquerque.
Speakers include Steve Chalk, deputy assistant secretary for renewable energy in Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Chalk oversees applied research, development and demonstrations for a diverse clean energy portfolio that includes wind power.
Also speaking will be Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC oversees U.S. wholesale electric transactions, interstate electric transmission and gas transportation in the United States.
The workshop brings together industry experts, academics and other researchers involved in all facets of wind turbine development, manufacture, operation and regulation. Discussions and activities should be informative for component researchers, industry participants, government, material suppliers and consultants.
An important feature of this year’s workshop will be the release of initial component and system reliability information gathered from a subset of the U.S. wind turbine fleet.
“This will be a first public step in characterizing component reliability issues related to the fleet of turbines in the U.S.,” said workshop chairman Roger Hill of Sandia’s Water Power Technologies group.
“Turbine reliability has a significant impact on the availability, and this data is critical in understanding reliability,” Hill said. “We’ll be using this venue to talk about issues that contribute to the unavailability of components and systems.”
The workshop also highlights related work, such as grid integration. Grid integration research involves investigating the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating a higher percentage of variable renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, onto the nation’s electric power grid.
“Renewable energy projects such as wind and solar are large in scale therefore the effect on system planning and operations is potentially significant,” said Abraham Ellis, a Sandia photovoltaic distributed energy systems researcher. “Anything we can do to properly characterize and reduce real or perceived technical risk can make these plants more attractive and viable in the energy generation portfolio.”
Further workshop information, registration details are available online.
The Marriott Pyramid North is at 5151 San Francisco Road NE. Due to limited availability, media wishing to attend should contact Stephanie Holinka at (505) 284-9227 or sholin@sandia.gov by Tuesday, Aug. 2, at 9 a.m.
Sandia’s Wind Energy Technologies Department conducts applied research on wind turbine performance and reliability intended to directly reduce the cost of wind energy. Research areas include materials and manufacturing; structural, aerodynamic and full-system modeling; advanced blade concepts; sensors and structural health monitoring; field testing and data acquisition; and systems integration.
By collaborating with operators, developers and manufacturers, Sandia evaluates known reliability problems and develops tools and methods to anticipate and investigate future reliability issues.