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%

SBIR%20Phase%20I:%20%20AERODYNAMIC%20FLOW%20DEFLECTOR%20FOR%20CURRENT%20AND%20FUTURE%20WIND%20TURBINES%20TO%20INCREASE%20THE%20Annual%20ENERGY%20Production%20BY%2010%%20AND%20REDUCE% 20%

• 批准号: 1549223
• 负责人: Arturo Villegas Vaquero
• 金额: $ 14.54万
• 依托单位: XPEED Turbine Technology LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1549223&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; AERODYNAMIC; FLOW; DEFLECTOR

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.

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于开发更有效的风能生产技术。这项技术将使风能在经济上更具吸引力，提高美国的能源安全，创造数百个就业机会，并通过提供替代可再生能源来帮助减少煤炭和天然气的排放。平准化能源成本（LCOE）预计将降低8%，这将有助于降低能源价格，并签署更多的风电购买协议。因此，美国公民将从口袋里掏出更少的钱来支付电费。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。预计年能源产量（AEP）将增加10%，为180万户家庭提供电力，减少1250万公吨的碳污染，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解决风电场业主的效率需求（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，使其具有可持续的竞争优势。此小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将解决与风力涡轮机空气动力学效率相关的挑战。它的重点是开发安装在风力涡轮机叶片上的空气动力学导流板。这些可以被纳入新的风力涡轮机设计或改装到数千个目前运行的涡轮机，以提高其效率。通过引入所提出的导流器，来流的速度的径向分量被重定向以产生额外量的扭矩并产生额外的功率。从与领先的风能公司的讨论中，人们普遍认为这可能是一个游戏规则改变者，也是迄今为止风力涡轮机最大的改进之一，但需要大规模的现场测试验证。因此，将该技术推向市场的关键技术挑战将在第一阶段解决，即在实际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，当采用所提出的技术改造大型商用涡轮机时，功率显著增加（AEP 2-3%），同时降低能量成本（LCOE 2%）。