University of Texas at Dallas earns $3M ARPA-E grant for offshore wind technology
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) of the United States Department of Energy has awarded the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) with a $3 million grant to aid the development of offshore wind turbine technology.
The award was part of a larger $26 million being distributed to 13 projects as part of the Aerodynamic Turbines, Lighter and Afloat, with Nautical Technologies and Integrated Servo-control (ATLANTIS) program. The end goal is the creation of floating, offshore wind turbines. UTD itself will aim for a design with a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) designers think will be favorable to deep water environments.
“This is exactly the kind of work Texans have been leading on, and with this grant, we can help ensure that North Texans will continue to lead the way on groundbreaking wind energy research,” U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) said of the news. “I congratulate UTD on this effort and I’m dedicated to continuing to support programs like ARPA-E that will help drive innovation that will help create good clean energy jobs down the road.”
The VAWT design UTD pursues brings to bear a lower vertical center of gravity and center of pressure. They require smaller, less expensive floating platforms than their competitors and could, according to developers, potentially reduce operations and maintenance costs through platform-level access to the system’s modular drivetrain. The UTD model will also include a hierarchical control co-design with aero-elastic tailoring of the rotor for reduced parked and operating loads, coordination of active on-blade flow control with rotor speed control to reduce torque variability and to include a lightweight, stable platform design.
