High-Performance Small Wind Turbine Blade for Mass Production

Under new federal incentives, sales of small wind turbines for farms and rural homes are increasing exponentially, but the current methods of blade production do not scale well and are limiting manufacturing growth. The current manufacturing method involves hours of hand work and a total manufacturing cycle of several days. Faster and less expensive methods of producing small wind turbines blades of approximately 5 meters in length need to be developed if this clean energy market segment is to contribute significantly to federal GHG reduction targets and a carbon-free grid by 2035. Wind turbine blades present many difficult and interacting design challenges, but new analytical tools, new materials and new manufacturing processes for composites present an opportunity to develop a high- performance blade that can used on a best-selling 15 kW turbine. In Phase I, new low Reynolds Number airfoils will be designed and integrated into a blade shape optimized for molding in addition to the normal structural optimization. Materials will be value-engineered and designed for recycling. New manufacturing processes will be evaluated, and one will be chosen for detail design and budgeting. Functional prototypes of the new blade design will be built, and field tested. The project will produce an advanced high-performance small wind turbine blade design suitable for mass production. The objectives are a 50% reduction in costs, a reduction in the production cycle from days to hours, and a 15% increase in energy production. The objective for Phase I is to design and validate an advanced small wind turbine blade that can be moved directly into fabrication, test, and certification to replace the current 15 kW turbine blade. If the objectives are met, the new blades will lower LCOE 18%, from 12.5¢/kWh to 10.3¢/kWh. There are approximately 2 million farms, 1.1 million rural small businesses and 21 million rural residences in America. NREL studies have shown that distributed wind is technically feasible at 49 million sites in America and has an economic potential of 1,400 GW. Mass production of blades will allow manufacturing to expand to meet the surging demand created by the robust incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.