SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is in the development of a more efficient wind energy production technology. This technology will make wind energy more economically attractive, improve the energy security of the U.S., create hundreds of jobs and help to reduce coal and natural gas emissions by providing an alternative renewable energy source. An expected reduction in the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) by 8% would help reducing the price of this energy and signing of more wind power purchase agreements. Therefore US citizens would be paying less money out of their pockets on their electric bills. Additionally, big reduction of the cost of wind energy has attracted over $100 billion in private investment since 2008. An expected 10% increase in Annual Energy Production (AEP) would power an extra 1.8 million homes, reduce carbon pollution by 12.5 million metric tons and generate $180 million a year in tax payments to communities. Finally, the innovation proposed in this application has the potential to address both the efficiency demands of wind farm owners (reducing the break-even times) and providing a disruptive design innovation to turbine manufacturers for them to have a sustainable competitive edge.


This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will address challenges related to aerodynamic efficiency of wind turbines. It focuses on developing aerodynamic flow deflectors to be mounted on the wind turbine blades. These can be incorporated into new wind turbine designs or retrofitted onto the thousands of currently operating turbines to increase their efficiency. By introducing the proposed flow deflector, the radial component of velocity of the incoming flow is redirected to produce an additional amount of torque and generate the extra power. From discussions with leading wind energy companies, there is a general agreement that this could be a game changer and one of the biggest improvements in wind turbines to date, but large scale field test validation is needed. Therefore, the key technical challenge to bring the technology to market that would be addressed in Phase I is to perform a field test of the flow deflectors in a large scale turbine (1-20 meter diameter) under realistic environmental conditions. The main goal for Phase I is to demonstrate the substantial power increase (AEP >2-3%) while reducing the cost of energy (LCOE >2%) when retrofitting a large scale commercial turbine with the proposed technology.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in enabling more efficient Annual Wind Energy Production (AEP) while reducing the cost of energy (COE). This will make wind energy more attractive economically, improve the energy security of the U.S, create jobs, and indirectly help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A 2% AEP increase is generally considered attractive. Two turbines (5kW and 50kW) tested during Phase I have shown an increase in AEP between 2% to 8% while reducing the COE by 1% to 6%. About 150,000 turbines worldwide can be potentially be retrofitted with this technology.This project will address challenges related to aerodynamic efficiency of wind turbines and the cost of wind energy. It is based on a deeper understanding of wind turbine aerodynamics from a more 3-dimensional point of view; most wind turbine designs are based on 2- dimensional theories. The key technical challenge in bringing this technology to market is to demonstrate the increase in AEP of utility scale turbines retrofitted with our deflector technology in realistic field conditions while reducing the COE. This will be addressed by performing testing at a few customer wind farms and NREL testing centers. The R&D plan consists of designing, manufacturing, and installing deflectors on a few utility size turbines (30-100 meters diameter rotors). The tests will include power performance comparison between baseline and retrofitted turbines according to international standards.