This is an excerpt from the First Quarter 2013 edition of the Wind Program R&D Newsletter.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) have completed construction of a new state-of-the-art wind plant research facility at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility is the first U.S. facility specifically designed and constructed to tackle the challenges of DOE's Wind Plant Optimization R&D efforts, which aim to increase the performance and reliability of wind technologies. Research and development (R&D) conducted at this facility will lower the cost of wind energy by reducing aerodynamic losses from turbine-to-turbine interactions, thereby enhancing energy capture and mitigating turbine fatigue damage.

The three highly modified and upgraded wind turbines constructed on the SWiFT site will serve as the first phase of DOE's effort to understand the complex wind flow and wakes within a wind plant. Construction of the pier-style turbine foundations (Figure 1) was completed in December 2012. After a full cure of the concrete, the towers were erected in February 2013 (Figure 2). To enable cutting-edge research, engineers performed detailed characterization of the towers and foundations (Figure 3). Then, the nacelles were assembled onto the towers (Figures 4 and 5). In March 2013, SNL worked with Vestas R&D to verify the performance of all operational and emergency systems on the heavily instrumented machines before finally erecting the turbine rotors. At the same time, two anemometer towers were erected to measure the three-dimensional flow through and above the rotor.

Now completed, the facility is currently undergoing validation and performance testing and will be commissioned this summer.