August 12, 2005—The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has announced that its wind turbine design codes—termed FAST and ADAMS—can now be used for worldwide turbine certification.
Through a joint effort by the NREL and Germanischer Lloyd (GL) of Hamburg, Germany, the world’s foremost certifying body for wind turbines, both codes were approved for calculating onshore wind turbine loads for design and certification.
Although many US wind turbine manufacturers have relied on these design codes to estimate the design loads of their turbines in the past, until recently the codes were not accepted by certifying agencies in Europe. To have turbines certified, manufacturers had to re-evaluate designs using European codes or hire European consultants, a process that increased the time and cost of certifying turbines.
To gain acceptance of the codes, NREL and GL ran a comparison between FAST, ADAMS, GL’s DHAT, and Garrad Hassan’s GH Bladed, a widely accepted European code. In its report, GL stated that the comparison showed good agreement between the codes.
For more information, visit the NREL Web site.
