Periodic Reporting for period 1 - STEP4WIND (Novel deSign, producTion and opEration aPproaches for floating WIND turbine farms)
Période du rapport: 2020-04-01 au 2022-03-31
STEP4WIND is a European Industrial Doctorate programme, granted under the H2020 Marie-Curie Innovative Training Network initiative (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2019, grant agreement 860737 ). The main objective is to address both technological and economical challenges related to the development of floating offshore wind farms.
Specifically, STEP4WIND aims at increasing the commercial readiness level of floating offshore wind energy through technological innovations across the supply chain. Floating wind turbines (FOWTs) could be a game changer to further decrease the cost of offshore wind energy and unlock new markets. Wind turbines placed on a floating support and moored to the seabed can harness energy in areas with much higher wind speeds, at a reduced installation cost. It also gives the opportunity to countries with deep water to enter the offshore wind industry. The SET-Plan stresses that Europe needs to move fast in deploying FOWTs. It also highlights the urgency to widen the basic knowledge of early-stage researchers (ESRs) towards the design of FOWTs and match it with industrial needs. This European Industrial Doctorate programme will achieve this by delivering 10 doctoral degrees jointly supervised by the public and private sectors. The ESRs are being supervised by 3 universities with a track-record in wind energy research and 4 companies leading the deployment of floating wind farms and heavily involved in policy-making bodies. A mentoring scheme will be tailored to the needs of each ESR, with the involvement of several female senior staff. Scientifically, STEP4WIND will develop floating-specific tools, methods and infrastructures to tackle the technological and economical challenges of FOWTs, from design to deployment, operation and scaling up. The innovations from each ESR will be systematically integrated in a common multi-disciplinary design and optimisation tool to assess their impact on cost, risk and the environment. STEP4WIND is working towards delivering guidelines for large farm deployments, with a clear roadmap to commercialisation. The results are being disseminated openly in a series of innovative ways, including an online game and a design competition.
Specifically, STEP4WIND aims at increasing the commercial readiness level of floating offshore wind energy through technological innovations across the supply chain. Floating wind turbines (FOWTs) could be a game changer to further decrease the cost of offshore wind energy and unlock new markets. Wind turbines placed on a floating support and moored to the seabed can harness energy in areas with much higher wind speeds, at a reduced installation cost. It also gives the opportunity to countries with deep water to enter the offshore wind industry. The SET-Plan stresses that Europe needs to move fast in deploying FOWTs. It also highlights the urgency to widen the basic knowledge of early-stage researchers (ESRs) towards the design of FOWTs and match it with industrial needs. This European Industrial Doctorate programme will achieve this by delivering 10 doctoral degrees jointly supervised by the public and private sectors. The ESRs are being supervised by 3 universities with a track-record in wind energy research and 4 companies leading the deployment of floating wind farms and heavily involved in policy-making bodies. A mentoring scheme will be tailored to the needs of each ESR, with the involvement of several female senior staff. Scientifically, STEP4WIND will develop floating-specific tools, methods and infrastructures to tackle the technological and economical challenges of FOWTs, from design to deployment, operation and scaling up. The innovations from each ESR will be systematically integrated in a common multi-disciplinary design and optimisation tool to assess their impact on cost, risk and the environment. STEP4WIND is working towards delivering guidelines for large farm deployments, with a clear roadmap to commercialisation. The results are being disseminated openly in a series of innovative ways, including an online game and a design competition.
Early Stage Researchers
All the 10 ESRs have been recruited and made good advanced in their work.
The STEP4WIND consortium (including all the supervisors) attend a supervisory board meeting every 3 months. This meeting is organized to share experiences and updates with the whole consortium. Almost all ESRs have been recruited according to the initial planning, excepting ESR7, that has started as last on 1st May 2021, due to a delay in the recruitment process. At the moment, 2 representatives of the ESRs have been chosen and attend the consortium meetings (the representatives change every 3 months as decided amongst the ESRs).
Network
A network was also established between 3 other ITN projects awarded in the same call as STEP4WIND, namely FLOAWER, LIKE, and Train2Wind. This network is referred to as the 4-ITN group. The general and training coordinators of each ITN are meeting on average every 3 months to discuss network and collaboration opportunities between the 4-ITN projects. This action was not forecasted in the Grant Agreement and brings additional opportunities to the ESRs, as training events are typically open across the 4-ITN projects.
Finally, the project website (step4wind.eu) has been created and collects activities/output across the network. A Twitter account (@step4wind) is also used for dissemination. Both are managed by the Coordinator.
Training activities:
- The first training "Open Science" event organised by TUD has taken place in May 2021 as planned and when all ESRs have been recruited.
- Second training event organised by STEP4WIND beneficiary, Polimi, was the (physical) Summer school in Italy, where all 10 STEP4WIND ESRs and 3PhDs students from DTU have attended. In terms of speakers, there were six teachers/supervisors representing STEP4WIND beneficiaries and two external experts.
- Third training event: OREC - Project Management, took place in July 2021 online.
- The ESRs have also had the opportunity to join other training events organised by the 4-ITN network or other organisations.
Dissemination
- Newsletters: two issues have beeen published online
- All ESRs presented their work in a number of international events, e.g. Wind Energy Science Conference, DeepWind Conference, Wind Energy Ireland.
- The project Coordinator also presented the overall project at different international meetings, e.g. FOWT2020 international conference (the largest event on floating offshore wind energy in the world), MSCA2020 international conference.
- The project actively teamed-up with the outreach organisation OffshoreWind4Kids to organise demo days on offshore and floating wind energy targeted at society.
- The ESRs have written their first papers, which will be published openly soon (2022).
All the 10 ESRs have been recruited and made good advanced in their work.
The STEP4WIND consortium (including all the supervisors) attend a supervisory board meeting every 3 months. This meeting is organized to share experiences and updates with the whole consortium. Almost all ESRs have been recruited according to the initial planning, excepting ESR7, that has started as last on 1st May 2021, due to a delay in the recruitment process. At the moment, 2 representatives of the ESRs have been chosen and attend the consortium meetings (the representatives change every 3 months as decided amongst the ESRs).
Network
A network was also established between 3 other ITN projects awarded in the same call as STEP4WIND, namely FLOAWER, LIKE, and Train2Wind. This network is referred to as the 4-ITN group. The general and training coordinators of each ITN are meeting on average every 3 months to discuss network and collaboration opportunities between the 4-ITN projects. This action was not forecasted in the Grant Agreement and brings additional opportunities to the ESRs, as training events are typically open across the 4-ITN projects.
Finally, the project website (step4wind.eu) has been created and collects activities/output across the network. A Twitter account (@step4wind) is also used for dissemination. Both are managed by the Coordinator.
Training activities:
- The first training "Open Science" event organised by TUD has taken place in May 2021 as planned and when all ESRs have been recruited.
- Second training event organised by STEP4WIND beneficiary, Polimi, was the (physical) Summer school in Italy, where all 10 STEP4WIND ESRs and 3PhDs students from DTU have attended. In terms of speakers, there were six teachers/supervisors representing STEP4WIND beneficiaries and two external experts.
- Third training event: OREC - Project Management, took place in July 2021 online.
- The ESRs have also had the opportunity to join other training events organised by the 4-ITN network or other organisations.
Dissemination
- Newsletters: two issues have beeen published online
- All ESRs presented their work in a number of international events, e.g. Wind Energy Science Conference, DeepWind Conference, Wind Energy Ireland.
- The project Coordinator also presented the overall project at different international meetings, e.g. FOWT2020 international conference (the largest event on floating offshore wind energy in the world), MSCA2020 international conference.
- The project actively teamed-up with the outreach organisation OffshoreWind4Kids to organise demo days on offshore and floating wind energy targeted at society.
- The ESRs have written their first papers, which will be published openly soon (2022).
The ESRs have already made a number of advances compared to the state-of-the-art, as summarised hereafter.
- Assessment of the discrepancies in the hydrodynamic coefficients of a floating support structure between high-fidelity CFD and potential flow method.
- New method for estimating the power produced by a floating wind turbine, without the need of running many fully-coupled simulations.
- Assessment of the accuracy of different data-driven algorithms o compute the loads on an offshore wind turbine.
- Assessment of the influence of installation costs in the optimisation of the floater size, which was so far not fully explored in the literature.
- A better understanding of the role of melting, crystallisation and thermal history during processing of carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastic tapes in laser assisted tape placement (LATP).
- Calibration of a hardware-in-the-loop numerical model for wind tunnel testing to match experimental data from a wave basin test campaign of a given platform.
- Validation between ORCAFLEX results and experimental tests for the loads and dynamics of electrical cables for floating turbines.
- Review of the challenges for marine operations and towing of floating turbines during installation and O&M.
- Inclusion of robotics-based inspection in a rigorous cost estimation methodology to assess challenges and benefits of different inspection strategies.
- Understanding of direct coupling methodologies for dedicated floating offshore wind and hydrogen production from a technical and logistical perspective.
The ESRs are well exposed to both academic and industrial sectors, with close supervision from both parties. Whenever possible, they are also participating in side activities where beneficiaries and partner organisations have an active role. An example is the IEA Tasks 30 and 37, coordinated by NREL and DTU respectively, where a number of ESRs are active. This gives additional visibility to their work and increase their professional network.
STEP4WIND is also instrumental in strengthening research on floating offshore wind energy at the different institutions, through the PhD works and the close collaborations with industries.
- Assessment of the discrepancies in the hydrodynamic coefficients of a floating support structure between high-fidelity CFD and potential flow method.
- New method for estimating the power produced by a floating wind turbine, without the need of running many fully-coupled simulations.
- Assessment of the accuracy of different data-driven algorithms o compute the loads on an offshore wind turbine.
- Assessment of the influence of installation costs in the optimisation of the floater size, which was so far not fully explored in the literature.
- A better understanding of the role of melting, crystallisation and thermal history during processing of carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastic tapes in laser assisted tape placement (LATP).
- Calibration of a hardware-in-the-loop numerical model for wind tunnel testing to match experimental data from a wave basin test campaign of a given platform.
- Validation between ORCAFLEX results and experimental tests for the loads and dynamics of electrical cables for floating turbines.
- Review of the challenges for marine operations and towing of floating turbines during installation and O&M.
- Inclusion of robotics-based inspection in a rigorous cost estimation methodology to assess challenges and benefits of different inspection strategies.
- Understanding of direct coupling methodologies for dedicated floating offshore wind and hydrogen production from a technical and logistical perspective.
The ESRs are well exposed to both academic and industrial sectors, with close supervision from both parties. Whenever possible, they are also participating in side activities where beneficiaries and partner organisations have an active role. An example is the IEA Tasks 30 and 37, coordinated by NREL and DTU respectively, where a number of ESRs are active. This gives additional visibility to their work and increase their professional network.
STEP4WIND is also instrumental in strengthening research on floating offshore wind energy at the different institutions, through the PhD works and the close collaborations with industries.