The engineers at Sandia National Labs are collecting SCADA data from some 900 wind turbines and plan on slicing and dicing it to better understand how the national fleet is performing now and where to focus future improvement activities. At the NREL’s recent Gearbox Reliability Collaborative, Sandia’s Alistair Ogilvie spoke on the value of wind-plant…
Blade workshop opens with a Sandia tour
In preparation for the Sandia Wind Turbine Blade Workshop, Sandia structural engineer Todd Griffiths sat down with me for a preview of his presentation and others. He tells of four important areas for Sandia’s wind effort. One is the active or smart blade, a blade that can react to changing wind conditions. As you can…