E-Mail IMAGE: Rachid Darbali-Zamora examines Sandia National Laboratories' new wind turbine motor, which will allow the distributed energy team to study how wind farms will behave under a variety of conditions and... view more Credit: Photo by Bret Latter, courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have a new tool that allows them to study wind power and see whether it can be efficiently used to provide power to people living in remote and rural places or even off the grid, through distributed energy. A new, custom-built wind turbine emulator has been installed at Sandia's Distributed Energy Technologies Laboratory. The emulator, which mimics actual wind turbines at Sandia's Scaled Wind Farm Technology Site near Lubbock Texas, will be used to study how wind farms behave under multiple weather conditions and load demands, and if they can be efficiently used as a source of distributed energy for consumers who live near the farms, according to Brian Naughton, a researcher with Sandia's Wind Energy Technologies program.