The National Renewable Energy Laboratory last month distributed another round of grants to boost small- to mid-sized wind turbine technology and marketing.

In announcing the funding, NREL said growth in this market sector will boost the development of distributed wind energy, which in turn will support local electrification, grid resilience and reliability, especially when combined with solar and/or storage technology.

NREL said this could support decarbonization in rural communities; support commercial, agricultural and industrial operations in windy regions; and avoid adding load to already strained transmission networks by delivering power directly to users.

The grants are part of the Competitive Improvement Project (CIP) that the U.S. Department of Energy began in 2012.

The sums of money involved are not huge: 11 companies will split $2.9 million in this latest round, bringing the program total to $15.4 million in grants plus $7.9 million in leveraged private-sector funding. But collectively the grants will improve technology, lower costs, encourage innovation and mitigate regulatory barriers, NREL said.

Increasing electrical output without also increasing manufacturing or installation expenses reduces a wind turbine’s levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and makes it more competitive in more situations with fossil-generated power.

NetZero Insider spoke with three of the recipients. Each has a significantly different niche within the small-to-medium wind market, but all said they see significant benefits from the CIP grants.

Bergey Windpower

In announcing the grants, NREL singled out Bergey Windpower in Oklahoma as a CIP success story, having doubled the power output of its flagship turbine with research and development assisted by several rounds of grants.

CEO Mike Bergey said the company’s Excel 10 became uncompetitive when Chinese solar manufacturers started flooding the U.S. markets with panels that could produce power more cheaply than the 10-KW wind turbine.

So the company followed the example of General Electric and Vestas in squeezing more power out of their megawatt-scale turbines: With CIP help, it lengthened the Excel 10’s rotors and optimized their aerodynamics to create the Excel 15, which produces 15 kW with essentially the same nacelle and tower as the Excel 10.

“The DOE funding has allowed us to develop a whole new design that cuts the LCOE in half,” Bergey said.

He co-founded the company with his father, the late Karl Bergey, in 1977 and has spent his career in the wind industry, with stints as president of the Distributed Wind Energy Association (which he founded) and the American Wind Energy Association (now the American Clean Power Association).

In the distributed energy sector, wind has suffered for years from solar competition, Bergey said.

“There’s so much promotion of solar, we’re kind of stuck in the shadows,” he said. Also, “we don’t have the kind of financing alternatives that the solar industry has.”

This year’s CIP grant to Bergey Windpower is not for technology development: It will help the company set up a financing model that cuts upfront costs for customers. The Excel 15 and a 100-foot self-supporting lattice tower run about $100,000 installed, before incentives.

The events of 2022 are a game-changer, Bergey said: He can direct potential customers to a 30% investment tax credit through the Inflation Reduction Act plus a 10% domestic production adder, because the Excel 15 is made in the U.S. with mostly American parts.

The cost drops even further via tax deductions for depreciation and Department of Agriculture grants, if the buyer qualifies.

The CIP grants, Bergey said, now seem prescient: They allowed the company to have a new product ready when a new financial paradigm created new market opportunities.

“Because we’re in the sixth year of [CIP], it’s really helped fill the pipeline,” he said.

Carter Wind Energy

Carter Wind Energy, another multigeneration family-run company, is based in Texas, which produces more wind power than the next three highest states combined.

But CEO Matt Carter said his company is not producing the megawatt-scale machines that are creating all that electricity.

“We’re focused on what we call a mid-sized market,” he explained — turbines producing 100 to 1,000 kW.

Carter Wind also uses a different technology than most other wind power manufacturers: lightweight towers designed to sway like a palm tree, and lightweight two-blade rotors oriented downwind from the tower, rather than three blades oriented upwind.

Further, the product is portable, can be set up without a crane and can be relocated on a two-wheel dolly. This is attractive for certain agricultural and manufacturing applications and for industries such as water treatment or oil and gas production.

Finally, customers do not have to buy the tower and turbine: Carter Wind (and investors) will own it and sell the power to the customer or lease the equipment to the customer.

This latest CIP grant — Carter Wind’s third — will help it develop a 60-meter tower whose six sections are tapered, allowing them to nest like a telescope for transport.

“From a shipping standpoint, you can make it much more portable,” Carter said.

The economics are lining up now for small-scale distributed and behind-the-meter wind power operations, he said.

Carter Wind has long been able to pitch a significant savings to potential customers who use diesel-burning generators in remote locations, but now it will be easier to sell wind power to customers who burn natural gas, Carter said, as the 10-year window of the IRA incentives firms up the financing picture.

“These industrial projects are now easier to pitch. … The ebbs and flows have been a challenge for our market, [with its] on-again-off-again incentives.”

XFlow Energy

Two previous CIP grants have helped XFlow Energy take its vertical-axis wind turbine from a concept on paper to testing in the field. This third award will help it design a tower and move toward a prototype incorporating the lessons learned from the models tested.

A half-scale prototype of the 25-kW vertical-access wind turbine being developed by XFlow Energy is shown in California. | XFlow Energy

The Washington state-based firm hopes to go to market with a 25-kW turbine in two years’ time, CEO Ian Brownstein said.

Vertical-axis wind turbines and the more commonly seen horizontal-axis designs each have their advantages and disadvantages, he said.

A key drawback of the vertical-axis orientation is the cyclical stress exerted on the rotors, which can cause fatigue. Brownstein and XFlow co-founder Ben Strom both focused on eliminating this problem in their doctoral research and in the subsequent R&D for their turbine.

A key advantage of the vertical-axis design, meanwhile, is its relative mechanical simplicity.

XFlow’s task is the classic R&D goal: Boost output and reliability while cutting costs, enhancing strengths and eliminating weaknesses.

“We’re trying to translate that to a true LCOE-competitive product,” Brownstein said.

Continual technical support from NREL has been just as important as the financial assistance in moving XFlow closer to a point where it can go to market, he said.

“We started with them when our design was pretty much on paper,” Brownstein said. “NREL support has been critical along the way.”

Mass production of the 25-kW turbine is a milestone goal for the company, not the destination, Brownstein said: “XFlow is definitely interested in building larger turbines.”