Innwind.EU Innovative wind conversion systems (10-20 MW) for offshore applications

Details:     

The proposed project is an ambitious successor for the UpWind project, where the vision of a 20MW wind turbine was put forth with specific technology advances that are required to make it happen. This project builds on the results from the UpWind project and will further utilize various national projects in different European countries to accelerate the development of innovations that help realize the 20MW wind turbine. DTU is the coordinator of this large project of 5 years duration and with a total of 27 European partners.

The overall objectives of the INNWIND.EU project are the high performance innovative design of a beyond-state-of-the-art 10-20MW offshore wind turbine and hardware demonstrators of some of the critical components.

The progress beyond the state of the art is envisaged as an integrated wind turbine concept with:

·         a light weight rotor having a combination of adaptive characteristics from passive built-in geometrical and structural couplings and active distributed smart sensing and control

·         an innovative, low-weight, direct drive generator

·         a standard mass-produced integrated tower and substructure that simplifies and unifies turbine structural dynamic characteristics at different water depths

The proposal addresses the heart of the Long Term R&D Programme of the New Turbines and Components strand of the European Wind Initiative (EWI) established under SET-Plan, the Common European Policy for Energy Technologies.

The consortium comprises of leading Industrial Partners and Research Establishments

Task 4.1: Innovations on component level for bottom-based structures

This tasks aims at innovations on component level to lower the costs of energy for 10 MW OWT to a competitive level. As jackets are the most relevant substructures for coming large wind turbines in deep water, the target needs to be to reduce their costs, i.e. in terms of design, fabrication and installation, by at least 20% compared to today’s prices. As there are no expectations of major overhaul of the concept itself, the cost savings can only be done by applying innovations at the component level. The component levels within this task cover all relevant topics of future cost-effective, mass-producible designs (e.g. cased joints and industry-standard piles), such as new foundation types (without grout and/or piling), soil-structure-interaction of large piles or suction buckets, innovative transition piece designs or designs consisting out of hybrid materials never used in wind energy before. In addition, design integration using jacket-specific controls and innovative fabrication and installation processes shall complete the overall cost saving potentials. In addition to the development of innovative components another major part of this task is their validation by testing. Within the given framework scale-tests of innovative joints and hybrid materials but also validation of soil-structure interactions will be realized. Here the experience of the task members in these areas and links to relevant national projects is highly beneficial and will enable a variety of tests, which will set new standards for coming structural designs.