Toward the Advanced Manufacturing of Land-Based Wind Turbine Blades: Preprint

Conference · Tue Dec 20 04:00:00 EST 2022

OSTI ID:1906862

Bortolotti, Pietro; Berry, Derek; Carron, William Scott; Khalifa, Sherif; Anderson, Todd; Meyer, Pascal; Chann, Molly

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and General Electric (GE) are partners within the Additive and Modular Enabled Rotor Blades and Integrated Composites Assembly (AMERICA) project. AMERICA aims to develop advanced manufacturing solutions to reduce labor and cycle time while increasing recyclability of wind turbine blades. The project is funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This paper describes the techno-economic analysis of the novel manufacturing process applied to the tip of the blade of a representative land-based wind turbine. A comparison to a standard manufacturing process is established, highlighting challenges and opportunities. Several uncertainties affect the analysis, but with the current set of assumptions, the tip adopting advanced manufacturing is predicted to lower labor by 21%, cycle time by 39%, and total blade tip costs by 15% while simultaneously increasing production quality and adopting recyclable thermoplastic resin.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Advanced Manufacturing Office (EE-5A)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1906862
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5000-84397; MainId:85170; UUID:c185e366-172e-4a26-a574-d8bba4ce6861; MainAdminID:68314
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

3D printing
WIND ENERGY
additive manufacturing
advanced manufacturing
automation
blades
composites
recycling
thermoplastics
wind energy