Richard Santos is an experienced aerospace engineer with a broad range of international experience in the design, control, analysis and testing of wind turbines. Dr. Santos holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from University of Colorado focusing on control of wind turbines as well as BS and MS degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Syracuse University with a focus on helicopter dynamics.
He worked for seven years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as a lead test engineer for mechanical loads certification testing where he played an important role developing their accredited test procedure for full-scale loads field testing. While at NREL, Dr. Santos was a contributing member of IEC Working Group 11 that successfully authored the IEC Technical Specification, "Wind Turbine Generator Systems, Part 13: Measurement of Mechanical Loads."
After NREL, Dr. Santos spent three years working for a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer while they developed their 80m and 100m multi-megawatt wind turbines. He is currently principal of Santos Wind Energy Technologies, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in design, analysis and testing of utility-scale wind turbines and servers as the convenrer of the IEC MT13 working group, responsible for the new mechanical loads measurement test standard. In his career, Dr. Santos has completed certification mechanical load field tests on turbines ranging from 2kW to 3.0 MW and collected and process well over 200,000 datasets.
