Dr. Mario Rotea, head of the UT Dallas Department of Mechanical Engineering, will give a keynote speech at a national meeting this month focused on new wind energy research.
Rotea will discuss the role of structural control systems to improve the reliability of large-scale wind turbines, and control strategies for the power management of wind farms with battery storage. The meeting will be at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
“There is a critical need for more research into this field, to enable more reliable wind turbines, more efficient wind farms, and the integration of wind and storage systems,” Rotea said.
The United States currently produces about 2 percent of its electricity from wind, according to the American Wind Energy Association. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy set a goal increasing wind energy’s contribution to the U.S. electricity supply to 20 percent by 2030.
To that end, UT Dallas is offering its first graduate course in wind energy this fall, which currently has 14 students enrolled. The university has several researchers working on various aspects of impact to the wind industry such as diagnostics and control systems, energy storage, generators and power electronics, materials and structures, risk analysis, robotic inspection, and real-time software.
The Wind Energy Research Workshop will be Sept. 22-23 and is sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. Speakers from Industry and National Labs and the Department of Energy Wind Technology Testing Center in Boston will also participate.