b"Look-AheadHURRICANE-RESILIENT WIND TURBINESW indtechnologyliterallyisPaos team has developed the Seg- tured to be lightweight and very growing.Todaysoffshoremented Ultralight Morphing Rotor,flexible so they can align with the wind turbines can tower about 500',or SUMR, turbine, a two-bladed,wind loads, said Mandar Phadnis, their spinning blades churning outdownwind rotor to test the perfor- lead author of the study inProceed-up to 8 MW eachroughly enoughmance of this lightweight concept.ings of the 2022 American Control to power 4,000 U.S. homes. On June 10 at theAmerican Con- Conference and graduate student But with greater size comes chal-lenges. Off the East Coast, where turbines are in the United States, in-creasingly powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricanespose risks to the struc-turesand to the future of wind en-ergy. To make those turbines more hurricane-resilient, a team of Univer-sity of Colorado, Boulder research-ers has taken a cue from nature and turned around turbines.Weareverymuchbio-in-spired by palm trees, which can survivethesehurricanecondi-tions, saidLucy Pao, Palmer en-dowed chair in the department of electrical, computer and energyK. Simpkins/University of Colorado, Boulderengineering. Lucy Pao stands at the National Renewable Energy Laboratorys Flatirons campus with the Traditional upwind turbines face53.38-kW SUMR-D directly to her right.incomingwind.Toavoidbeing blown into the tower, a blade musttrol Conference, researchers pre- in electrical, computer and energy be sufficiently stiff. A lot of mate- sented results from a study of fourengineering. That way, we can re-rial is required to build these rela- years of real-world data from test- duce the cost of the blades and tively thick, massive blades, whiching the 53.38-kW demonstrator, akabring down the cost of energy.drives up their cost. Turbine bladesSUMR-D, at the National RenewableThisinnovativeworkcouldnt on downwind rotors, however, faceEnergy Laboratorys Flatirons cam- comeatabettertime.Climate away from wind, so theres less riskpus just south of Boulder, Colorado. change demands a quick scale-up of a blade hitting the tower whenThe researchers found that theirof more cost-effective, reliable re-windpicksup.Thismeansthatturbine performed consistently andnewable energy, and rising global blades can be lighter and moreefficiently during periods of peaktemperatures also likely are causing flexible, which needs less materialwind gustsa satisfactory result. hurricanes to intensify.CTEand therefore less money to make.Thebladesaremanufac- Kelsey SimpkinsThese downwind blades also can bend instead of break in the face of strong winds, much like palm trees. ctemag.comFor six years, in conjunction withFor more information about this research on wind tur-collaborators at University of Virginia,bines, view a video presentation at www.ctemag.com by University of Texas at Dallas, Colo- scanning the QR code with your smartphone or enter-rado School of Mines and the Na- ing this URL on your web browser: https://qr.ctemag.tional Renewable Energy Laboratory,com/1dhdmctemag.com/cteguide.com33LookAhead.indd 33 11/16/22 4:02 PM"