US Offering $45M For Huge Wind Energy Test Bed

coondoggie writes "On a day when one of the largest wind farm plans bit the dust, the US Department of Energy is offering up a five-year, $45 million grant to design and build a large dynamometer facility for testing 5 to 15 MW rated wind turbines and equipment. The DOE says such a facility is needed as the US has fallen behind other countries in the race to build ever-larger wind turbines for energy production. According to the DOE, the average size of wind turbines installed in the United States in 2007 increased to roughly 1.65 MW. Additionally, turbines already developed range in the 2.5 MW to 3.5 MW capacity sizes; with plans being developed for even greater power ratings. The larger wind turbines have outpaced the availability of US-based testing facilities, the DOE stated."

Why?

[Dripdry]

IANAE (Engineer, yes) however I seem to recall the energy generation from wind turbines being a fairly simple function of the size. Although I understand there is an acreage issue is it truly necessary to develop bigger and bigger turbines? Can someone explain this? Is it simply that we should optimize the land useage?

Also, bring on the inevitable "ditch wind, go nuclear" stuff. I can has mod points now?

Re:Why?

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe they want to test wind turbines to destruction, or model their behaviour in different weather conditions. For example: how does ice deposition on turbine blades affect efficiency? Do this introduce any dangerous operational modes?

I find this hard to believe...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for an aircraft engine company (Pratt & Whitney). They had lots of test cells for engine testing & research. This was a big heavy block of reinforced concrete with lots of instruments attached, and you bolt the engine to it.

I really doubt a wind turbine generates more power. I'm sure you could build one on the edge of a cliff so you don't need to worry about the wind turbine blades hitting something.

Re:Why?

[XPeter]

Also, bring on the inevitable "ditch wind, go nuclear" stuff. I can has mod points now?

IANAA (Adult, yes) Nuclear is much more efficient when compared to wind farms, but nuclear energy hasn't been developed enough for it to be used as a main energy source. There are many advances and safety precautions to be made before nuclear goes to the big leagues. Intermittently though. we need to drastically cut our addiction to oil and go after power like wind and solar.

Re:So if I understand this correctly...

[frosty_tsm]

You raise good points that I won't argue with, so I'll raise my own.

Most wind farms are in the middle of nowhere (for example, the one an hour outside the LA area on the I-10). Building a test location here requires a) the R&D staff relocate or b) the R&D staff drive potentially hours to work and then back. Neither of those is attractive to potential hires. If you were generous and decided to include their commute as paid time out of their 8 hour day, this could result in 4 or 6 hour work days. To offset the reduced productivity (in pure hours), the team needs to be doubled. Then there is more overhead (meetings, admin, recruiting, lower hiring standards, etc) due to the higher headcount. As painful as it might sound, $45M to build this in a population center might actually be cheaper.

Re:Why?

[samkass]

And Brazil gets only 3% from nuclear, has only slightly less power requirements than France, and yet is largely independent of foreign oil, while France is not.

Re:So if I understand this correctly...

[Romancer]

So your comparison is between a test bed that uses:

"equipment to stress the turbine at various loads, to manufacture wind speed conditions that mimic many different places around the country, and different loadings, look at various types of network interconnects... "

And

"fully instrument an experimental Turbine in the field"

What exactly would be the difference in creating a test structure that could mount the turbine, and an in place dyno, other than the fact that one has all the instrumentation built into it to see the real world off axis loading that natural wind creates that cannot be duplicated in a test dyno without risking the dyno itself?

How fast can the dyno shift axis and reverse direction? As fast as the wind? What happens if the wind does this, can the dyno certified drivetrain survive? Can the blades?

Why not test the system as it will be tested in real life. Why do we always have to half ass this stuff?
 

Re:Why?

[MichaelSmith]

Maybe. Years ago when I worked on the FA18 there was a team working on crack growth analysis on (I think) the Mirage or the F111. They had stripped an airframe down in a test chamber in the US, cooled it down until the metal became brittle, then stressed it with hydraulic rams until cracks started to grow out of control. The resulting model was used to predict catastrophic failure in operational aircraft.

I can imagine similar things being done on turbines, for similar reasons.

$45 million over 5 years?

[Animats]

It's so government.

I once worked in an R&D facility for heavy hydraulic equipment. They had about fifty test cells of different sizes, the largest of which was used for hydraulic transmissions for medium-sized locomotives. Those test setups used a big motor and a water-cooled brake; the hot water went through a cooling tower, and then to sprinklers in what appeared to be a decorative lake out front but was really a heat sink. That gear was in the 5MW range, somewhat smaller than what's being described here, but not a lot smaller.

That setup was where it belonged, near the engineers who designed the things and the machinists who built the prototypes. When the big test cell was put in, it took a few months to build. Not five years.