Ducted Wind Turbines, the company formed by Clarkson University Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering Ken Visser and his team has won a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with funding from the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office, works with dozens of small businesses across the United States to enable wind technology as a distributed energy resource through the Competitiveness Improvement Project. The goals of the CIP are to make distributed wind energy cost competitive, improve its interoperability with other distributed energy resources, and increase the number of small and mid-scale wind turbine designs certified to national testing standards.
Launched in 2013, the CIP supports manufacturers of distributed wind turbines through competitively-awarded, cost-shared funding to 1) optimize their designs for increased energy production and grid support, 2) test turbines and components to national standards to verify performance and safety, and 3) develop advanced manufacturing processes to reduce hardware costs. Beyond funding support, awardees can receive technical assistance from NREL to improve their turbine designs and testing plans. Since 2013, NREL has awarded 36 subcontracts to 20 companies, totaling just over $8.4 million in investment, while leveraging millions in additional private-sector funding.
Ducted Wind Turbines will use the grant to advance the pre-prototype design of their new ducted 3-kW wind system, including a detailed technical review of their preliminary design and initial testing results.
The concept for the turbine came out of Visser’s research and lead to the incorporation of a company (Ducted Wind Turbines) through the Shipley Center. Faculty, staff members, alumni, and many students have been involved in the work on the project to get to this point. Operation of the wind turbine will provide on-going opportunities for student research and design projects and will be a showcase for DWT.
Ducted Wind Turbines (DWT) is a wind turbine company that focuses on providing the lowest cost per kilowatt hour in the small turbine market. DWT’s design produces more than two times the energy of a conventional open bladed wind turbine of the same rotor diameter.
