The gigantic gear will be installed at Clemson's Wind Turbine Drive Train Testing Facility North Charleston, a coastal community in the US state of California.
Once in place, it will be part of a 400-ton unit capable of testing drive trains for turbines that can produce 15 MW of power.
Currently, there are two other such testing facilities, one in Spain and one in the US state of Colorado, but the Clemson test site will handle far larger units. It is scheduled to celebrate its grand opening and dedication on 21 November 2013.
In November 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Clemson University a $45 million grant to build and operate a facility capable of full-scale, highly accelerated testing of next-generation wind turbine technology.
The U.S. DOE EERE’s objective for this project is to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation wind turbine technology to reduce the cost of energy delivered. The mission of the facility is to forge public-private partnerships in a unique industrial coastal environment and support the nation’s emerging offshore wind industry and educate the workforce of the future.
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