CENER, Technical Advisors for the future Wind Testing Facility in the USA

5 March 2010

Two technicians from the National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) will travel to South Carolina next week to take part in the Technical Advisory Committee for the future Wind Turbine Test Facility, which will be constructed in the United States. They have been invited by the University of Clemson, with which the Spanish technology centre maintains an excellent relationship.

Pablo Ayesa (Director of the Wind Energy Department) and Gurutz Urcelai (in charge of the Wind Turbine Test Laboratory) are the technicians from CENER who are going to participate in this Committee.

The new wind turbine powertrain test infrastructure planned has been fostered by the Federal Government, which, after organising a competitive tender, decided to award it to the University of Clemson. A 97 million dollar investment budget has been earmarked for the project, which has mainly come from subsidies provided by different American public institutions. The facility will house equipment that will be used to test real scale wind turbines up to 15 MW.

The Powertrain of the CENER Wind Turbine Test Laboratory has the capacity to test machines with a maximum power of 6 MW. However, the singularity of the LEA is that, apart from the installation mentioned, it houses a test plant for blades of up to 100 metres, a compound material laboratory, a wind turbine assembly simulator and an electricity generator test plant. In all, infrastructures that cover 30,000 sq.m., which is why it is considered to be the largest and most varied in the world.

The invitation to CENER as a member of this Technical Advisory Committee represents, on the one hand, a recognition of its innovative work in the technological development of wind energy and, on the other hand, the possible start-up of an international collaboration group for the development of standards and procedures for the experimental testing of high-power wind turbines.