This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project intends to eliminate the transportation problem faced by large wind turbine blades for land-based wind farms. Transporting blades by truck constrains their size to a limit that falls somewhere between 50m ? 60m, due to roadway length, height and weight limitations. If blades over this transportation limit were available for use at land-based wind farms, larger turbines could be used, lower class wind sites would be opened for development, and capacity factors could be increased using existing turbines. This SBIR Phase I project will further develop a modular blade tooling concept that will allow continuous blade spars of 100m or more to be produced on-site at wind farms thus eliminating road transportation issues. This tooling concept encompasses an array of logistical improvements that optimize the effectiveness of this on-site approach. The unique manufacturing method allows superior integration of the structural components of the blade, producing a more robust product that is not susceptible to typical blade failure modes. During this Phase I feasibility will be evaluated across three major: Manufacturing Methodology, Structural and Dynamic Performance, and Logistics and Cost Modeling.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be to reduce the cost and therefore increase the penetration of wind power. Wind turbine power output increases with the square of the blade radius. Offshore turbines (in the 5MW to 7MW range) use blades that are 60m to 80m in length. If transportation was not an issue for land-based turbines, these turbines would continue to scale in capacity with their offshore counterparts. Longer blades would also allow for the development of lower class wind sites with currently available turbines increasing the penetration of domestic renewable energy. Additionally longer blades would allow an increase in capacity factors for currently available turbines lowering their cost of energy, a topic of critical importance to wind project developers. Blade manufacturing at the wind farm will create local jobs. Although a 100m blade tool may be transportable, its logistics pipeline is large and will still require local transport and all the supply chain logistics of large scale production. However, instead of all this being done out of state or out of the country and then transported to a US farm, a large portion of the blade manufacturing work will occur at the turbine site.
