Genevieve Starke
Graduate student, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Clean, renewable wind energy now accounts for more than 8% of the U.S. s electricity generation, up from about 4% in 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In March, President Joe Biden announced a plan to expand offshore wind energy projects, part of a larger initiative to vastly increase the country s renewable energy production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Last week, the administration officially approved the country s first major offshore wind farm near Massachusetts.
But large-scale wind farms present new engineering challenges. Classical engineering models formerly used to estimate power output for moderately sized wind farms don t always work reliably for today s larger wind farms, where complex turbine arrangements are more common, Gayme says.