Pecos Wind Power will be testing of their 85-kW PW85 prototype wind turbine with the aid of the DOE’s award of $200,00.

On Wednesday, July 17, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected Pecos Wind Power in Somerville as part of its 2024 Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP). These selections will advance distributed wind turbine technology through testing and commercialization, providing more certified technology options for clean energy deployment.

Pecos Wind Power was selected under the Prototype Installation and Testing Perform category. Pecos Wind Power will perform testing of their 85-kW PW85 prototype wind turbine in Neodesha, Kansas with an award of $200,000.

“DOE is working to ensure that farmers, rural small businesses, and electric cooperatives have more options for affordable, safe, and reliable clean energy systems,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “These investments in projects to expand rural distributed wind will also support U.S. energy independence, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration’s clean energy goals.”

The Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP) provides financial and technical support to manufacturers of small wind turbines. Managed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office, CIP awards cost-shared subcontracts and technical support to manufacturers of small and medium-sized wind turbines. Designed to make distributed wind energy technologies more cost-competitive and reliable, these awards help manufacturers of wind turbines less than 1 MW in capacity to:

• Optimize their designs
• Develop advanced manufacturing processes
• Perform turbine and component testing and certification
• Accelerate pathways for commercialization.

The goals of CIP are to make wind energy cost-competitive with other distributed generation technologies and increase the number of wind turbine designs tested and certified to national standards.