A major collaboration between universities and energy companies has made vital improvements to offshore wind turbines, enabling them to generate more renewable energy and reduce the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels.
- Great cooperation between universities and industry has resulted in essential improvements in offshore wind production
- Partnership between Universities of SheffieldDurham, Hull and energy companies Siemens Gamesa And Ørsted has developed ways to make wind turbines more efficient, reliable, lighter and cheaper
- Collaboration also helps energy companies to better predict problems and outages
- Improvements allow wind turbines to run longer and generate more renewable energy, reducing the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels
A major collaboration between universities and energy companies has made vital improvements to offshore wind turbines, enabling them to generate more renewable energy and reduce the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels.
The £7.7 million partnership between the universities of Sheffield, Durham, Hull and two global energy companies, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Ørsted could help offshore wind turbines run longer, increasing the amount of energy each wind farm generates.
The collaboration, which includes different projects at each university, has developed ways to make wind turbines more reliable, efficient, lighter and less expensive.
A project at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering has made crucial improvements to the direct-drive generator – the technology that allows wind turbines to run without a gearbox. This is often the most vulnerable part of a turbine and can require expensive maintenance and repairs.
Sheffield researchers have made improvements to the materials used in many of its components to make the generator much more reliable, efficient and lighter. The improvements have also reduced manufacturing costs.
Professor Zi-Qiang Zhu, from the Electrical Machines and Drives Research Group at the University of Sheffield, said: “In modern direct drive generators there is no gearbox. This eliminates 50 percent of the components of a wind turbine and has a direct positive effect on the reliability of the system. We’ve developed ways to make the generator even more efficient, including improvements to choice and the use of better materials for many of the components. This helps reduce the production costs of the generator system by 20 percent.”
Academics from Sheffield’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, led by Professors Nikolas Dervilis, Keith Worden, David Wagg and Elizabeth Cross, have devised ways to monitor the health of components in wind turbines to help energy companies better predict problems and failures.
Professor Devils said: “The new technologies we’ve developed use a combination of data and physics to allow us to track the performance of entire wind farms, as well as individual components on each turbine, such as the blades and mechanics.
“These advancements, together with the research being conducted at the Universities of Durham and Hull, will ensure that offshore wind turbines operate more efficiently and for much longer. This in turn will help reduce the UK’s dependence on non-renewable energy sources and generate a greater percentage of the UK’s total energy consumption from renewable sources.”
Doctor Arwyn Thomas, Industrial Principal Investigator of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE)one of the world’s leading suppliers of wind energy products and solutions, said:
“This partnership enables SGRE to steer the university to apply its outstanding track record of innovation to real-world issues facing the industry. It helps to focus the research on areas that are much more relevant and will have much more immediate, positive impacts. This in turn ensures that our graduate and postdoctoral researchers develop the right skills to enter the industry and help solve the current skills shortage.”
Dave Bould, senior project representative of Ørsted, that develops, builds and operates offshore wind farmssaid: “The University of Sheffield’s work to develop more efficient and effective ways to monitor the health of wind turbine blades is an exceptional example of research that can be applied directly by industry to improve commercial performance.
“Modern wind turbines are huge structures that should ideally last the entire lifespan of an offshore wind farm without replacement or major maintenance. Replacing a structure of this size in the harsh offshore environment is a very costly and time consuming activity resulting in significant amounts of lost power generation. The work at the University of Sheffield is aimed directly at improvements in the early warning of potential blade failures and helps us minimize the risk of unexpected repair or replacement of parts.
“Overall, improvements in health monitoring, operations and maintenance are helping us to continually reduce the cost of offshore wind energy – savings that are passed on to consumers.”
It is estimated that the cost of energy from offshore wind farms is now a quarter of what it was in 2009, thanks in part to the progress made with these types of partnerships.
Another important result of the collaboration has been to help identify where the next research phases should be concentrated so that even more improvements can be developed. Funding has already been obtained for a number of follow-up projects in which the partner institutions will participate.
The importance of further research in this area has been recognized by the award of an EPSRC-funded research grant worth £6.3 million. This will be led by the University of Sheffield and will lead to new standards for safer, greener structures in the future.
The partnership was funded by the UKRI Prosperity Partnership programme, which aims to support research into real issues and those identified by industry partners. This will allow the results of the project to be quickly incorporated into the research and development and production strategies of the offshore wind sector.
Thanks to The University of Sheffield
With nearly 29,000 of the brightest students from over 140 countries, learning alongside more than 1,200 of the best academics from around the world, the University of Sheffield is one of the world’s leading universities.
Sheffield is a member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group, a group of leading research institutions, offering world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines.
United by the power of discovery and understanding, the university’s staff and students are committed to finding new ways to transform the world we live in.
Sheffield has six Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and its alumni hold positions of great responsibility and influence around the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields.
Global research partners and customers include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many UK and foreign government agencies and charitable foundations.
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