The Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) board has also finalized a ‘Centers of Energy Excellence’ designation and a $6m grant for AWE to establish operations with an initial focus on the production of spar caps for wind turbine blade.
The grant will also be used by Dow for material development and optimization, and by MAG for designing, constructing and demonstrating a prototype automated system for manufacturing the spar cap.
Dow and MAG will initially focus on the advanced materials and automating manufacturing technology for AWE to produce spar caps, with a long-term vision for the technology to be used for both the fabrication of other wind turbine components and assembly of those components into finished wind-turbine blades.
