Novel deSign, producTion and opEration aPproaches for floating WIND turbine farms

Project Information

STEP4WIND

Grant agreement ID: 860737

DOI

10.3030/860737

Project closed

EC signature date 5 February 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 31 August 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 2 748 099,95

EU contribution

€ 2 748 099,95

Coordinated by

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STEP4WIND (Novel deSign, producTion and opEration aPproaches for floating WIND turbine farms)

Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

STEP4WIND is a European Industrial Doctorate programme whose 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. 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. This European Industrial Doctorate programme achieves 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. 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 are systematically integrated in a multi-disciplinary design and optimization 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 commercialization. The results are being disseminated openly in a series of innovative ways, including an online game and a design competition.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Early Stage Researchers
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.

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 3-6 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. A LinkedIn account was also created and managed by the ESRs.

Training activities:
- All training activities have been organised as planned. An exception is the training on risk consideration in FOWTs by OREC which was replaced by a unique visit to the Kincardine floating wind farm organised in OREC in collaboration with the company Flotation Energy. During the visit, many practical aspects of floating wind farms were discussed, including risks. Another training on blade manufacturing originally planned by Eire Composites was organised by TU Delft instead.
- The ESRs have also had the opportunity to join other training events organised by the 4-ITN network, the EU-funded TWIND project, or other organisations.

Dissemination
- Newsletters: two issues have beeen published online
- All ESRs presented their work in a number of international events, e.g. Torque, Wind Energy Science Conference, Deep Wind 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, and in media targeting the general public (e.g. De Telegraaf - the most widely read Dutch national newspaper, and popular science magazine such as KIJK and Quest).
- 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 several journal and conference papers, as outlined in our website.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The ESRs have already made a number of advances compared to the state-of-the-art, as summarised hereafter.

- Extraction of important hydrodynamic coefficients (added mass and damping coefficients) from CFD simulations and development of a new method to correct hydrodynamic loads on floating wind turbines in engineering tools based on CFD data.
- Best practices for wind turbine nacelle modelling in CFD and analysis of floating wind turbine wake physics.
- Development of probabilistic data-driven methods for site analysis for fixed-bottom and floating wind turbines, as well as surrogate model for accelerating optimization framework for semi-submersible foundation design.
- Development of an MDAO framework allowing to assess categorical and dimensioning trade-offs for floating wind farms, as well as the assessment of the importance of accounting for life-cycle trade-offs in substructure concept selection.
- Development of a new state-of-the-art experimental scale model wind tunnel setup for hybrid testing.
- Further characterisation of the melting and crystallisation behaviour of the thermoplastic composites and experimental characterisation of the different flow modes, percolation and squeeze flow, of the thermoplastic composite using a dynamic-mechanical analyser.
- Better understanding of the hydrodynamic behaviour of dynamic cables in extreme environmental conditions and impact of local stresses on the fatigue life of the dynamic cable. Development of a cost optimization framework for dynamic cables including steep wave, lazy wave and suspended cables for water depths ranging from shallow to deep waters.
- Development of a systematic approach for optimising towing operations, including seakeeping of the floating offshore wind turbine and transit draft, operational criteria and towing vessel capability. Detailed experimental campaign and numerical modeling were performed.
- Estimation of the impact of three robotic systems (UAVs, ROVs and ASVs) on the levelized cost of energy for a floating wind farm.
- Identification of the optimum operation of hydrogen production systems in a floating offshore wind turbine farm and techno-economic assessments for the most reasonable routes of coupling floating offshore wind with hydrogen production.

The ESRs are well exposed to both academic and industrial sectors, with close supervision from both parties. Whenever possible, they are also participating inside activities where beneficiaries and partner organisations have an active role. An example is the IEA Tasks 30, 37, and 49, 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.

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