On November 14-15, 2012, DTU Wind Energy hosted the Kick-off meeting for the EU FP7 supported INNWIND.EU project which aims at innovations that enable the realization of the giant 20MW offshore wind turbine. Approximately 65 people from twenty seven partners from different European organizations participated in the kick-off meeting held at DTU Risø Campus.
The objectives of the project include component level innovations integrated into the wind turbine, virtually tested and developed along with hardware demonstrations of Innovations such as super conducting generators, pseudo magnetic drives and smart blades.
The proposed project is an ambitious successor for the UpWind project which concluded Feb. 2011, where the vision of a 20MW wind turbine was put forth with 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.
The project has a lifetime of 5 years duration with 27 partners involved. The progress beyond the state of the art is envisaged as an integrated wind turbine concept with:
i) 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,
ii) an innovative, low-weight, direct drive generator and
iii) a standard mass-produced integrated tower and substructure that simplifies and unifies turbine structural dynamic characteristics at different water depths.
DTU is the coordinator of this large project, as was the case with the UpWind project. "We are happy to lead the research and development of the next generation offshore wind turbine between 10 and 20MW in rating. This project encompasses some of the best European research institutions, universities and wind turbine manufacturers and industries.
The collaborative research and demonstration over a span of 5 years will significantly foster the reduction of cost of energy for the offshore wind energy sector by the development and application of the right technology at large scales. " says Peter Hjuler Jensen, Deputy Head of Department of DTU Wind Energy and project co-ordinator.
The project is broadly split into four technical work packages on conceptual design at the system level, lightweight rotors, electromechanical conversion and offshore support structures, along with work packages on project exploitation, dissemination and management. The management of the project is assisted by Anand Natarajan, Senior Scientist at the wind turbine structures section at DTU wind energy and supported by the work package and task leaders within the project.
One of the key targets for the design of these large multi megawatt wind turbines is to beat the cubic law of weight (and cost) of classical up scaling, which renders a 10-20 MW offshore design cost-effective. The project further focuses on the development of new modelling tools capable of analyzing 20MW innovative turbine systems and to integrate the design, manufacturing, installation, operation and decommissioning to optimize the structure and life-cycle as a whole.