Site Assessment 101

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Excerpt: A first step in the development of a wind farm is to identify land with sufficient wind to support a commercial project. This calls for a series of studies, one of which is the wind-study assessment that looks at historical wind data. There may be a meteorological or met tower in the area that has a …

Software 101

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Excerpt: Design firms run on engineering and support software. One recent announcement reported on an OEM and engineering software firm teaming up to develop what might be called TurbineCAD. The final product has not been announced. Programs worth noting (and available) to the wind industry simulate t …

Certification firm to evaluate simulation software

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Excerpt: A certification firm has started a project to evaluate the LMS Samtech software tool SAMCEF For Wind Turbines (S4WT). The software allows simulating the complete dynamic behavior of wind turbines under realistic wind conditions. The objective of the project is to validate and to certify S4WT for …

Software ready for designing electric machines (think generators)

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Excerpt: The latest release of MotorSolve, electric-machine design software, is now available. Engineers from a wide range of industries use Infolytica software to design and analyze applications such as electromechanical devices, non-destructive testing (NDT), induction heating, power electronics, senso …

Software for turbine-gearbox design gets and upgrade

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Excerpt: GL certified RomaxWIND is software for design and analysis of wind-turbine gearboxes, bearings, and drivetrains. Its use adds value because it can reduce costly design iterations, develop durable products, and facilitate a unique understanding of component and system behavior. The software ca …

Is that offshore tower strong enough? Software tells.

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Excerpt: DNV is launching design software for ultimate strength and fatigue analysis of offshore wind turbine structures - Sesam GeniE Wind. Building on 40 years as a design tool for engineering floating and fixed offshore structures, the Sesam module addresses the wind industry’s need to model the com …

Software lets many programs share data, work together

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Excerpt: The latest release of Isight provides designers, engineers, and researchers with an open system for integrating design and simulation models—created with various CAD, CAE, and other software applications—to automate the execution of hundreds or thousands of simulations.  The software lets u …

Software assists quieting noisy turbine

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Excerpt: By: Brett A. Marmo and Barry J. Carruthers Xi Engineering Consultants Ltd. Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.  Wind turbines occasionally get a bad rap for noise. At times, it’s not the turbine’s fault but rather an internal problem that amplifies the noise. For instance, a recent set of …

Moble apps pull up data from NREL

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Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory is home to a mountain of data on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and alternative transportation. NREL has launched a new website that will make the data more accessible than ever. NREL's new site, developer.nrel.gov, provid …

Wind-farm-design software refines uncertainty and loss estimates

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Excerpt: A renewable-energy-consulting and information firm has released openWind Enterprise 1.3, software that further refines the wind farm design process with improved loss and uncertainty estimates. In addition to an ability to optimize for cost of energy and assess deep array impacts, current Enterp …