Walt Musial

Workshop: Unmoored Floating Offshore Wind: Unlocking the Vast Energy Resources of the High Seas

Workshop: Is Bigger Always Better? Trade-offs Between Upsizing and Industrialization

Other: Regional Update Breakfast – Great Lakes: Fresh Water Wind Challenges & Opportunities

Walt Musial is a Principal Engineer and leads the offshore wind research platform at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where he has worked for thirty-four years. In 2003 he initiated the offshore wind energy research program at NREL which focuses on a wide range of industry needs and critical technology challenges. He chairs the ACP Offshore Wind Standards Subcommittee and is the Senior Technical Advisor to the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium. Through the U.S. Department of Energy and with NREL’s strategic partnerships with industry and regulators, Walt is leading multiple research activities to build the knowledge base for U.S. offshore wind regional frontiers, which include the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Maine, and the Pacific Ocean. Previously, Walt developed and ran NREL’s full-scale blade and drivetrain testing facilities for fifteen years. Earlier, Walt worked for five years as a field test engineer in the commercial wind energy industry in California. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, specializing in energy conversion with a focus on wind energy engineering. He has over one hundred twenty publications and two patents.