The Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility is a collaborative research facility, located at the Reese Technology Center in

Lubbock, Texas Lubbock ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Lubbock County. With a population of 272,086 in 2024, Lubbock is the 10th-most populous city in Texas and the 84th-most populous in the United States. The city is in the ...

, in the United States. It is the first public facility to use multiple

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

s to measure turbine performance in a

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

environment as a user facility for the Wind Energy Technologies Office of the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

. The project was formally commissioned in the summer of 2013.

Partners

Some of the present research collaboration involves the following research partners: *

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public university, public research university in Lubbock, Texas, United States. Established on February 10, 1923, and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the flagship instit ...

National Wind Institute The National Wind Institute (NWI) at Texas Tech University (TTU) was established in December 2012, and is intended to serve as Texas Tech University's intellectual hub for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, commercialization and edu ...

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force B ...

(SNL) for the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) of the U.S. Department of Energy *

Vestas Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...

, a Danish wind company * Group NIRE, a renewable energy corporation created in 2010 by Texas Tech.

Facilities

The SWiFT facilities consist of: * SWiFT Wind Turbines: Three research-scale wind turbines (modified Vestas V27s), two deployed by Sandia and the third one by Vesta * Meteorological (MET) Towers: Two 60-meter-tall

anemometer In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti ...

towers for measuring wind speed * Control Building: Housing 640 square feet of computing space for wind-turbine control * Assembly Building: A 5,500 square foot, environmentally controlled high-bay assembly area with machining capabilities (

lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, threading and turning, with tools that are applied to the w ...

, multiple mills, drill press, welders, and related items)

References

{{Reflist Energy research institutes Energy research Wind turbines Wind energy organizations Renewable energy