Bergey Wind Power Company of Norman, Oklahoma is among a dozen firms named as recipients of part of more than $3 million in federal government funding to advance distributed wind turbine technology.
Bergey Wind will receive an award of $500,000 to implement advanced blade manufacturing processes to help meeting growing demand and reduce costs.
The $500,000 is part of $3.15 million awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to 12 U.S. component suppliers and manufacturers of small-and medium-sized wind turbines as part of the 2024 Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP). These selections will advance distributed wind turbine technology through testing and commercialization, providing more certified technology options for clean energy deployment.
Bergey’s award was the only one named under the Manufacturing Process Innovation category, which stated its project is designed to support designing, building and validating improved wind turbine manufacturing processes to reduce costs and increase throughput.
Bergey Wind Power was founded in 1977 by Karl Bergey and his son Mike Bergey. Karl Bergey died in 2019 and son Mike has been President of the company since 1987. The younger Bergey is an internationally reocognized expert in the fields of small wind systems, distributed generation and green telecom. He has served as a consultant to a number of U.S. and international agencies.
“DOE is working to ensure that farmers, rural small businesses, and electric cooperatives have more options for affordable, safe, and reliable clean energy systems,” said Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
“These investments in projects to expand rural distributed wind will also support U.S. energy independence, a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris Administration’s clean energy goals.”
One of the awards totaling $200,000 went to Pecos Wind Power of Massachusetts. The company intends to conduct testing of its 85-kW PW85 prototype wind turbine in Neodesha, Kansas.
CIP is designed to make distributed wind energy technologies more cost competitive, reliable, grid-compatible, and accessible. Once these 2024 contracts are finalized, DOE will have awarded 77 subcontracts to 30 companies, totaling $18.5 million in funding while leveraging $11.2 million in additional private-sector investment since CIP began in 2012.