This is an excerpt from the First Quarter 2013 edition of the Wind Program R&D Newsletter.

Washington, D.C.β€”The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy recently awarded 70 grants totaling $10.5 million to small businesses to develop technologies with a strong potential for commercialization and job creation. These awards will help small businesses with promising ideas for clean energy solutions that could improve manufacturing processes, boost building efficiency, reduce reliance on foreign oil, and generate electricity from renewable sources.

Funded through DOE's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs, the awards included the following three projects that will explore concepts for improving the performance and reducing the costs of land-based and offshore wind technologies:

Boulder Nonlinear Systems, Inc., in Lafayette, Colorado, will develop a compact, low-power wind sensor to monitor offshore winds and optimize wind power generation.
Hyper Tech Research, Inc., in Columbus, Ohio, is developing a lightweight, 5–6-megawatt (MW) land-based superconducting wind turbine generator that is easily transportable.
Wetzel Engineering, Inc., in Lawrence, Kansas, will research the development of field-assembled, component-based rotor blades to avoid the expense and logistical challenges of transporting very large blades.