Latino scientist leads the way at first wind farm in the nation

By Alex Zielinski, NBCLatino

Officials from Texas Tech, the Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories, Vestas and Group NIRE welcomed Tech’s newest wind energy facility on Tuesday.

It’s called the Scaled Wind Farm Technology Facility (SWiFT) and it will be the first of its kind in the entire nation.

“There’s a lot of research avenues that come from this facility, but one of the main ones is starting to optimize wind plants, not just optimizing the individual turbine,” said Director of the Texas Tech National Wind Institute John Schroeder.

Schroeder said the goal is to get more energy out of the entire plant by studying the interaction between turbines.

SWiFT wants to build around 100 machines, watch how they interact and see if they are hindering wind production.

Jose Zayas, the Director of Wind and Water Technologies for the Department of Energy, said this is cutting-edge research in wind energy.

“What we’re trying to do in this facility is to gather the information to try and understand that and better address it,” he said.

This article was first published in NBCLatino.