Researchers at the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratories created a tool that they plan to use to design a novel floating wind turbine that they said could help expand offshore deployments in deep water locations.
The turbine design places the generator closer to the water, instead of on the top of a tall tower. The approach makes the turbine less top-heavy and reduces the size and cost of the platform needed to keep it afloat. Sandia filed a patent application for the design in 2020.
A few tools exist that could do some but not all of the modeling that was required for the design and optimization tasks. The Sandia-developed design tool can simulate the wind, waves, blade elasticity, platform motion and controllers.
