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

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

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

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.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages16
StatePublished - 2022
Event2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum - National Harbor, Maryland
Duration: 23 Jan 202327 Jan 2023

Conference

Conference2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum
CityNational Harbor, Maryland
Period23/01/2327/01/23

Bibliographical note

See NREL/CP-5000-90896 for paper as published in proceedings

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5000-84397

Keywords

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

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