Side Events
Side meetings and workshops will be held on Monday, October 13 and Tuesday, October 14 in the
Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas. If you are interested in hosting a meeting, please see the Host Information at the bottom of the page.


Please note that the schedule is subject to change and exact start and end times for meeting have not yet been finalized. Meetings are free to attend unless the host chooses to charge for attendance and include catering. A separate registration page to sign up for side meetings will be posted at a later date. See below for descriptions of the meetings and workshops.
Task 55 REFWIND
International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 55 REFWIND coordinates international efforts to rigorously define reference wind turbines and plants. The reference systems address land-based applications as well as fixed-bottom and floating offshore installations. In this meeting we will discuss recent work, namely the 22MW offshore reference wind turbine, the 2200MW offshore reference wind plant, and the common ontology windIO v2.0. We will also discuss next steps, such as the design of a new generation of land-based wind turbines.
Contact: Pietro Bortolotti, pietro.bortolotti@nrel.gov
Wind farm design tool Ard
This will be an interactive tutorial to learn the new wind farm design tool Ard. An ard is a type of simple and lightweight plow, used through the single-digit centuries to prepare a farm for planting. The intent of Ard is to be a modular, full-stack multi-disciplinary optimization tool for wind farms. The problem with wind farms is that they are complicated, multi-disciplinary objects. They are aerodynamic machines, with complicated control systems, power electronic devices, social and political objects, and the core value (and cost) of complicated financial instruments. Moreover, the design of one of these aspects affects all the rest! Ard seeks to make plant-level design choices that can incorporate these different aspects and their interactions to make wind energy projects more successful.
Contact: Cory Frontin, cory.frontin@nrel.gov
FLORIS
The FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) tool enables fast modeling of wind farm wakes and calculation of AEP losses due to wakes. Additionally, FLORIS contains design tools to productivity and maximize profits by optimizing flow control strategies, like wake steering, as well as optimize layouts of new wind plants. This tutorial will introduce FLORIS, including background on the models, a brief presentation of previous results, and a hands-on demonstration.
Contact: Misha Sinner, michael.sinner@nrel.gov
WEIS
Wind Energy with Integrated Servo-control (WEIS) is a multifidelity co-design framework for wind turbines. Developed by NREL, WEIS integrates a suite of in-house tools to support the design of floating, offshore, and onshore wind systems.
In this workshop, the WEIS team will demonstrate how the core models are integrated within the framework, outline key design and analysis workflows, and guide participants through hands-on examples that highlight critical aspects of WEIS and how to interpret the resulting outputs.
Contact mayank.chetan@nrel.gov and daniel.zalkind@nrel.gov for more information.
FAST.Farm
FAST.Farm is an open-source, physics-based engineering software tool applicable to the power performance and loads analysis of wind turbines within a wind farm. FAST.Farm is the wind farm extension of the OpenFAST aero-hydro-servo-elastic tool that enables loads analysis of land-based, fixed-bottom, and floating offshore wind turbines. This workshop will provide attendees with an
overview of FAST.Farm and related software, recent improvements and developments, modeling guidance and tips, demonstrations, source code/compiling, Q&A time, and information on how to get involved. The workshop requires previous experience with aero-elastic modeling (including, but not limited to OpenFAST experience). The FAST.Farm workshop will be led by Jason Jonkman and Regis Thedin of NREL and Emmanuel Branlard of UMass-Amherst.
Contact: Jason Jonkman, jason.jonkman@nrel.gov
HOPP/H2Integrate
This workshop will provide an overview of the Hybrid Optimization and Performance Platform (HOPP) and the H2Integrate: Holistic Hybrids Optimization and Design Tool package, both open-source software developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. HOPP simulates hybrid power plants for optimal design and dispatch and H2Integrate enables the design of energy systems to be used with industrial end-uses. Together, the two software packages enable the component-level design and dispatch of hybrid power plants to power industrial end-uses. The workshop will cover a general overview of the software capabilities and structure. Afterward, the workshop will present a hands-on tutorial on the installation and use of the package, covering the setup and a few simulation examples using different hybrid power plant configurations.
Contact: Genevieve Starke, Genevieve.starke@nrel.gov
NAWEA business meeting
The North American Wind Energy Academy (NAWEA) will hold its annual business meeting. We will review the past year and plan for the years to come. The organization will be significantly restructured to keep up with the shifting mission space for the academic community. Opportunities and needs for new initiatives will be reviewed. Revisions to the Charter for the organization will also be discussed.
Contact: Paul Veers, paul.veers@nrel.gov
Airborne wind energy (AWE) subscale demos and show-and-tell demonstration
Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) Subscale Demos and Show-and-tell will take place on Monday or Tuesday prior to the NAWEA Conference at UT Dallas Outdoor Multipurpose Field. Demos are weather- permitting.
For Updates and Participation, please contact dave.santos.gorena.guinn@ieee.org.
Host Information
Workshops and side meetings may be either public (open registration) or private (no formal registration; invitation by meeting host). Payment for the meeting space will be the responsibility of the meeting host. Attendance to the meetings will be free of charge for the attendees, unless the meeting host decides to charge an attendance fee to cover the costs of the space booking. No expectations are made about whether meeting hosts or attendees also attend the NAWEA/WindTech conference. The conference hotel rate will be made available to the meeting hosts and attendees.
Lunch and refreshment breaks are included in the cost of the room. We are currently working through the details of this and will confirm with meeting hosts once this is finalized.
If you are interested in hosting a meeting, please reach out to Misha Sinner (michael.sinner@nrel.gov) for a list of available rooms and associated costs.