Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) recently reached a major milestone by successfully remounting a rotor on one of its heavily modified Vestas V27 turbines at the SWiFT facility in Lubbock, Texas.

Wind engineers at SWiFT have been preparing for this event since 2014 when one of the turbines overspend and failed. Since then, SNL’s Wind Energy Technologies Department has been evaluating and improving hardware, software, safety systems, procedures, training, and security at the SWiFT site. Site and process improvements include the following: 

  • A new generator brake system to maintain stopping capability with failure tolerance
  • A new hardware-in-the-loop testbed to provide exact-replica testing of the turbine controller prior to deployment on the turbine
  • A significantly strengthened hardware safety system with multiple layers
  • Implementation of robust review and approval procedures
  • A rigorous readiness review and change management system designed to expedite future testing efforts.

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With the rotor remounted, SNL is now preparing SWiFT for an Energy Department Moderate Hazard Facility Readiness Review. A successful readiness review is the final Energy Department authorization needed for the SWiFT team to proceed with the rotational tests of the turbine commissioning, a process that will verify performance of the stopping mechanisms and power production controller. Completion of commissioning will return the facility to full operational capability and begin a wide range of wind plant research.

SWiFT is the principal wind farm research facility for investigating wind turbine wakes as part of the Energy Department's Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e) initiative, which strives to ensure that future wind farms are sited, built, and operated to produce the most cost-effective and usable electric power.

This year, SWiFT will be the focus of a joint experiment conducted by SNL and NREL to study the use of wind farm controls to mitigate the impact of wind turbine wakes on farm performance.

At the end of 2016, the facility will fly the first blade set from the Energy Department and SNL’s National Rotor Testbed (NRT) program, which aims to demonstrate the ability to functionally scale utility rotor characteristics to the more cost-effective research scale of the SWiFT turbines. The NRT rotor will recreate the wake of a utility-scale turbine, whereas future NRT rotor designs could demonstrate wake mitigation, damage-mitigating active load control, and other innovative design concepts.

To support A2e’s industrial partnership objectives, SWiFT will partner with Windar Photonics and Westergaard Solutions to investigate simultaneous feedforward/feedbackward wake control. Additionally, Pentalum Technologies, Texas Tech University, and SNL have partnered on a Binational Industrial R&D Foundation grant to further develop a new approach to light detection and ranging system technology with the hopes of leveraging that technology to develop wind plant controllers.