This document summarizes a panel discussion on trends in wind turbine blade technology and changing research and development needs. The panel was hosted by Sandia National Laboratories and included experts from major wind turbine manufacturers. Key points discussed include the potential for longer blades to reduce costs of energy, challenges in manufacturing and transporting larger blades, opportunities for innovations in blade design from advanced modeling and testing, and Sandia's facilities and capabilities for experimental research and development of new wind plant technologies.

1. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin
Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. SAND NO. 2011-XXXXP
Panel: Trends in Blade Technology and Changing R&D Needs
• Anurag Gupta, Director for Advanced Technologies, Vestas Wind Systems
• Ken Lee, Blades Structures, Envision Energy
• Jesper Månsson, Senior Director, LM Wind Power
• Jacques Nader, Head of Blade Design and Boulder R&D Office, Siemens Energy, Inc.
• Chair: Carsten Westergaard, Senior Advisor (Cont.), Wind & water, Sandia National Laboratories

2. DOE Wind Program Mission
§ We seek to increase the deployment of wind energy systems
to offset carbon in the atmosphere and increase domestic
energy product by technology development guided by
Department of Energy Wind Vision towards 35% wind
penetration in 2050:
Ø Wind Power Resources and Site Characterization
Ø Wind Plant Technology Advancement
Ø Supply Chain, Manufacturing and Logistics
Ø Wind Power Performance, Reliability, and Safety
Ø Wind Electricity Delivery and Integration
Ø Wind Siting and Permitting
Ø Collaboration, Education, and Outreach
Ø Workforce Development
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3. Wind Energy Technologies Objective
§ Serve the nations needs by providing world leading expertise:
1. Rotor Systems Innovation
2. Innovative Experimentation in Wind Plant Technologies and
Operations
3. Quantification and Reduction of Uncertainties in Wind Plant
Modeling and Experimentation
4. Wind Power Performance, Reliability, and Safety
§ We accomplish our open-innovation goals through a nation-
leading engineering team, leveraging the broader capabilities
of the largest US engineering laboratory and utilizing the most
advanced and well documented wind plant research facility in
the world
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4. Why Innovative Rotors?
§ Single largest driver of LCOE reduction
§ Longer blades both reduce LCOE and
allow for increased deployment
§ Larger blades require breakthroughs in:
§ Modular/on-Site Construction
§ Load control
§ Low-cost high strength fiber
§ Manufacturing quality
§ Improvements to design standards are
needed for low wind-speed rotors
§ Taller towers enable longer blades
§ New opportunities may be found in
blade innovation combined with wind
plant controls
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5. A controlled
connection between
rotor and rotor wake
impact every aspect
of the plant
Rotor systems innovation
§ The wind plant rotors controls and drives every aspect of a successful
wind plant operation. Advanced rotor concepts offer great potential for
improving reliable wind plant performance while reducing energy costs
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§ Innovative rotors flown at the National Rotor Testbed hosted at DOE/
Sandia SWiFT wind plant offers elaborate verification and validation a real
and controlled wind plant environment, documented to reduce
experimental uncertainties and thereby the reliability of the results

6. Innovative Experimentation in Wind
Plant Technologies and Operations
§ Ensuring site suitability, reproducibility, resilience and
efficiency of wind plants to produce usable electric power
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Variability
Tower vibration
§ Wind plant controllers
§ Cyber security and micro grid
integration
§ Development and testing of
new flow diagnostics with
commercial partners
§ Data analytics (SCADA) wind
plant performance and
reliability analysis
§ Environmental impact, such as
radar interference mitigation

7. Quantification and Reduction of Uncertainties in
Wind Plant Modeling and Experimentation
§ High-fidelity modeling of wind plants for reduction
in COE
§ Accurate prediction of wind plant power production
§ Understanding of complex aero-structural load scenarios
§ Leveraging of nuclear weapons simulation
technology
§ Sandia’s Nalu computational fluid dynamics code has been
chosen as a DOE exascale application code for exploitation of
next-generation supercomputing hardware.
§ Nalu is an open source code born from the Fuego code, used
originally for abnormal fire environments for stockpile
systems.
§ Validation
§ Validation experiments to be performed at SWiFT and other
facilities
§ Quantified uncertainty bounds on simulation predictions -
needed for decisions impacting wind plant design and
financing
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A Nalu simulation of stalled flow past a wind
turbine blade section, performed in the DOE
Trinity supercomputer.

8. Wind Power Performance,
Reliability, and Safety
§ Sandia leads efforts in wind turbine reliability research, specifically
focusing on:
§ Nondestructive inspection
§ Effects of blade defects
§ Composite materials research
§ Structural health monitoring
§ Structure dynamics
§ Wind loading
§ Full system hazard and root cause analysis
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9. Innovative wind plant technology
platform for the future industry partnerships
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Short term program goals:
§ Reduce turbine-turbine inter-
action and wind plant under-
performance
§ Develop advanced wind
turbine rotors
§ Public, open-source in order to
produce high accurate results
supporting development of
advanced simulations
Facilities:
§ Three variable-speed variable-pitch modified wind turbines with
full power conversion and extensive sensor suite
§ Two heavily instrumented in-flow meteorological towers
§ Massive LIDAR instrumentation (in the pipeline)
§ Site-wide time-synchronized data collection
§ Home to the National Rotor Testbed

10. Thank you!
This work is supported by the US DOE EERE Wind and Water Power Program.