Critical technologies to improve the lifetime, efficient decommissioning and increase the circularity of offshore and onshore wind energy systems

Innovative technologies to improve the lifetime, efficient decommissioning and increase the circularity of wind energy systems. Project can address one of the following points:

• Development of improved, more damage-tolerant materials (composites and adhesives) considering different external conditions in which the materials are used (consider very low/high temperatures, ice, corrosion, erosion.
• The development of improved manufacturing procedures for turbine components and construction methods for wind turbine farms and design methods for wind turbine components.
• The development of materials and interfaces for joints of major load-carrying parts like main spars (split blades and tower parts).
• The development of bio-based fibres and resins with improved mechanical properties.
• Lifetime extension by innovative design for increased resilience and repair solutions for in the first-place wind turbine components like blades, drive train and generators’, and support structures.
• New installation, decommissioning, and condition monitoring technologies and operation and maintenance methodologies (e.g. remote controlled devices for in situ repairs by robots).
• New efficient recycling technologies for wind energy components.
• Alternatives in materials/new advanced materials.
• New technologies for effective and environmentally friendly decommissioning of wind energy systems.

But it is not excluded to consider other solutions.

This R&I need is critical for onshore wind given the large volumes of capacity to be decommissioned in the next decade. The R&I need was also identified in the offshore renewable energy strategy (COM(2020) 741 final) that commits the Commission to ‘systematically integrate the principle of ‘circularity by design’ into renewables research & innovation’.