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Article Summary and Reflection
Published on January 28th, 2016, the article Enormous blades could lead to more offshore energy in US highlights the most recent design for gigantic blades. The blades are bigger than two football fields and are useful as they can help bring 50 megawatts of wind turbines offshore to the United States and the rest of the world. Through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program, the Department of Energy is funding Sandia National Laboratories in carrying out research about the extreme-scale Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR). The challenge is to design the gigantic blade which requires over 200 meters of rotor blade. Compared to any existing blade in the world, the blade will be two and half times its size. The benefit of this blade is that it is low cost has the power to scale up power output of the current existing turbines by more than six times. Griffith, the lead designer of the project noted that the United States possesses huge potential when it comes to wind energy however because offshore installations are rather expensive hence there is a need to develop larger turbines that capture energy at reasonably priced costs.
In my opinion, the article, without a doubt, discusses the issue at hand in a sound scientific way. This is because the article references details about how the gigantic blade will be of help to the nations. The article delves into the nitty-gritty of why the 50-megawatt turbine will be helpful despite it costing a fortune to create. The fact that the blade will be six times the size f the largest turbines shows that the authors of these articles had conducted a background research before writing it. This shows that the information is scientifically sound as many details are mentioned, which indicates in-depth research. One of the ways this article could have been improved would be making use of more statistics. I feel that the authors did not quote enough statistics in the article, but rather they used many direct quotations instead. I feel that using statistics improves the credibility and reliability of the article.
