Achievement

An engineering student visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for two months. He worked on a research project involving a 1/50th scale model of an offshore floating wind turbine developed by the University of Maine. He used the scale model to calibrate and validate the wind turbine simulation software developed by NREL. Ultimately, these simulations will be part of the design standards for offshore wind turbines. These standards provide guidelines, and include engineering criteria as well as environmental and policy public acceptance criteria.