These ladies and gentlemen agree to restart Sandia Lab’s SWiFT facility, a collection of turbines used to study how they interact on wind farms.
The SWiFT Facility passed a critical milestone towards a complete restart of operations with the approval to re-mount rotors and complete the commissioning. The SWiFT Restart Technical Review Committee granted the approval when they met at the SWiFT Facility in Lubbock, TX, on November 12 & 13, 2015. The committee included members from Sandia National Laboratories, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Department of Energy, Texas Tech University, Vestas, Group NIRE, DNV, Westergaard Solutions, and E&L Software.
The technical review covered 32 corrective action measures including safety hardware, braking systems, software (configuration, revision control, and release procedure), hardware-in-the-loop test stand, documentation (operations procedures, turbine electrical and mechanical maintenance, and safety system design), barriers, signage, and emergency procedures. With 31 of the 32 required corrective actions were approved by the committee, the restart of the SWiFT facility is underway. The single corrective action that requires rework and review is a minor edit to a safety design document. The SWiFT SNL #1 turbine is expected return to operations in March 2016.
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