UMaine Composites Centre gets $1.4 million for wind energy
October 11, 2019 - United Kingdom
The University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Centre (UMaine Composites Centre) has been awarded $1.4 million from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) programme for wind energy technology. Founded in 1865, UMaine is a land, sea, and space grant institution and premier university, based in England.
UMaine will collaborate with a $1.5 million award with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, both focused on research related to transformational floating offshore wind energy technology. UMaine received a highly competitive $1,398,202 award from ARPA-E to design an ultra-lightweight, corrosion-resistant, concrete floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT), equipped with NASA motion mitigation technology, originally developed to reduce vibrations in rockets, according to a press release by the university.
In addition, UMaine is a key collaborator in another $1,529,923 ARPA-E award working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to validate new, optimised designs for floating offshore wind. UMaine has adapted the NASA technology to counteract FOWT motions, leading to lighter platforms, increased turbine performance, and a lower levelised cost of energy (LCOE). The proposal will take a radical next step in the field of offshore wind, while building on UMaine’s experience in successfully designing and deploying the first grid-connected floating offshore wind turbine in the US. The proposed technology is a departure from current floating concepts and achieves a significant LCOE reduction, even when using standard wind turbine architectures.
“We are very appreciative that ARPA-E has selected UMaine for these very highly competitive awards. With this funding, we plan to further stabilise our floating wind turbine hull technology in extreme storms by integrating NASA rocket vibration suppression technology into the design. This will help lighten the hull and further decrease our already very low electricity costs. This work builds on our 12 years of experience in floating wind technology, and provides a whole new direction that could further revolutionise the design,” Habib Dagher, executive director of the UMaine said.
“The programme will leverage the unique design, numerical modelling and scale model testing expertise located at the UMaine Harold Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Laboratory to significantly advance this concept and offer a cost-competitive solution to industry,” Anthony Viselli, manager of offshore design and testing at UMaine said.
In collaboration with UMaine, NREL will develop and execute the Floating Offshore-wind and Controls Advanced Laboratory (FOCAL) experimental programme. The project’s goal is to generate the first public FOWT scale-model data set to include advanced turbine controls, floating hull load mitigation technology, and hull flexibility. Current FOWT numerical tools require new capabilities to adequately capture advanced designs based upon control co-design methods.
The FOCAL experimental programme will generate critical data sets to validate these capabilities from four 1:60-scale, 15-MW (megawatt) FOWT model-scale experimental campaigns in the UMaine Harold Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Laboratory. The experiments will generate data for FOWT loads, motion and performance, while operating with advanced turbine and platform controls in realistic wind and waves.
UMaine will collaborate with a $1.5 million award with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, both focused on research related to transformational floating offshore wind energy technology. UMaine received a highly competitive $1,398,202 award from ARPA-E to design an ultra-lightweight, corrosion-resistant, concrete floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT), equipped with NASA motion mitigation technology, originally developed to reduce vibrations in rockets, according to a press release by the university.
In addition, UMaine is a key collaborator in another $1,529,923 ARPA-E award working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to validate new, optimised designs for floating offshore wind. UMaine has adapted the NASA technology to counteract FOWT motions, leading to lighter platforms, increased turbine performance, and a lower levelised cost of energy (LCOE). The proposal will take a radical next step in the field of offshore wind, while building on UMaine’s experience in successfully designing and deploying the first grid-connected floating offshore wind turbine in the US. The proposed technology is a departure from current floating concepts and achieves a significant LCOE reduction, even when using standard wind turbine architectures.
“We are very appreciative that ARPA-E has selected UMaine for these very highly competitive awards. With this funding, we plan to further stabilise our floating wind turbine hull technology in extreme storms by integrating NASA rocket vibration suppression technology into the design. This will help lighten the hull and further decrease our already very low electricity costs. This work builds on our 12 years of experience in floating wind technology, and provides a whole new direction that could further revolutionise the design,” Habib Dagher, executive director of the UMaine said.
“The programme will leverage the unique design, numerical modelling and scale model testing expertise located at the UMaine Harold Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Laboratory to significantly advance this concept and offer a cost-competitive solution to industry,” Anthony Viselli, manager of offshore design and testing at UMaine said.
In collaboration with UMaine, NREL will develop and execute the Floating Offshore-wind and Controls Advanced Laboratory (FOCAL) experimental programme. The project’s goal is to generate the first public FOWT scale-model data set to include advanced turbine controls, floating hull load mitigation technology, and hull flexibility. Current FOWT numerical tools require new capabilities to adequately capture advanced designs based upon control co-design methods.
The FOCAL experimental programme will generate critical data sets to validate these capabilities from four 1:60-scale, 15-MW (megawatt) FOWT model-scale experimental campaigns in the UMaine Harold Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Laboratory. The experiments will generate data for FOWT loads, motion and performance, while operating with advanced turbine and platform controls in realistic wind and waves.