The U.S. Department of Energy has allocated a circa USD 1.3 million grant to Rutgers University to develop a software for the design of floating offshore wind turbines.
The university’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering secured the funding through ARPA-E’s Aerodynamic Turbines, Lighter and Afloat, with Nautical Technologies and Integrated Servo-control (ATLANTIS) program.
According to Rutgers University, Assistant Professor Onur Bilgen and his team will use the award to develop a software for designing cost-effective floating offshore wind turbines.
The researchers plan to use the software to design a turbine that generates more electricity while using fewer materials to manufacture it, and while reducing its maintenance and operational costs.
This will be done by combining two approaches, including control co-design and mixed-fidelity modeling for design optimization, the university said.
“Without accurate and complete modeling of a wind turbine with all of its interacting components, such as wind, water, structural, electrical and economic dynamics, we cannot design the best turbine for a given site and we cannot decisively compare the efficiency metrics or costs of the different designs. Our project aims to enable us to do just this,” Bilgen said.
“Others will be able to use our software to design the next generation of wind turbines for their sites that will reduce the cost of electricity for consumers.”
To remind, in February, DOE announced up to USD 28 million in funding for the ARPA-E program to develop new technologies for floating offshore wind turbines using the discipline of control co-design (CCD).
ARPA-E’s ATLANTIS program focuses on new floating wind turbine designs, new computer tools, and experiments that collect data to validate turbine designs and computer tools.