Scaled Wind Farm Technology Facility

The Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility is a collaborative research facility, located at the Reese Technology Center in Lubbock, Texas, in the United States.^[1] It is the first public facility to use multiple wind turbines to measure turbine performance in a wind farm environment as a user facility for the Wind Energy Technologies Office of the United States Department of Energy.^[2] The project was formally commissioned in the summer of 2013.^[1]

Partners

Some of the present research collaboration involves the following research partners:^[1]

• Texas Tech University
• National Wind Institute
• Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) for the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) of the U.S. Department of Energy^[3]
• Vestas, a Danish wind company^[4]
• Group NIRE, a renewable energy corporation created in 2010 by Texas Tech.

Facilities

The SWiFT facilities consist of:^[3]

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