SBIR Phase I: AERODYNAMIC FLOW DEFLECTOR FOR CURRENT AND FUTURE WIND TURBINES TO INCREASE THE ANNUAL ENERGY PRODUCTION BY 10% AND REDUCE THE LEVELIZED COST OF ENERGY BY 8%

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发更高效的风能生产技术。这项技术将使风能在经济上更具吸引力，改善美国的能源安全，创造数百个就业机会，并通过提供一种替代可再生能源来帮助减少煤炭和天然气排放。预计将统一能源成本(LCOE)降低8%，将有助于降低这种能源的价格，并签署更多风电购买协议。因此，美国公民从口袋里掏出的电费将会更少。此外，自2008年以来，风能成本的大幅降低吸引了超过1000亿美元的私人投资。预计年发电量(AEP)将增加10%，将为180万户家庭提供电力，减少1250万吨碳污染，并每年为社区带来1.8亿美元的税收。最后，本申请中提出的创新有可能满足风力发电场所有者的能效需求(减少盈亏平衡时间)，并为涡轮机制造商提供颠覆性的设计创新，使他们拥有可持续的竞争优势。这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将解决与风力涡轮机空气动力效率相关的挑战。它的重点是开发安装在风力涡轮机叶片上的气动导流板。这些可以被整合到新的风力涡轮机设计中，或者改装到目前运行的数千台涡轮机上，以提高它们的效率。通过引入所提出的流量导向器，来流速度的径向分量被重新定向，以产生额外的扭矩并产生额外的功率。从与领先风能公司的讨论中，人们普遍同意，这可能会改变游戏规则，并成为迄今为止风力涡轮机最大的改进之一，但还需要大规模的现场测试验证。因此，将第一阶段解决的技术推向市场的关键技术挑战是在现实环境条件下对大型涡轮机(直径1-20米)中的导流板进行现场测试。第一阶段的主要目标是证明在使用拟议技术改造大型商用涡轮机时，功率大幅增加(AEP 2-3%)，同时降低能源成本(LCOE 2%)。

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.