Posters

Abstract

The increase in the share of renewables is essential to reach EU climate and energy goals of producing at least 40% of the EU´s energy from renewables by 2030, and wind turbines will play a significant role in this this path. To achieve the target, it is necessary to act both on new wind turbines and on already installed ones, since a main proportion of the installed EU wind fleet's lifetime will come to an end between 2020/2030. The state-of-the-art in validation tests of wind turbine components requires full scale testing in ad-hoc test-benches. With wind turbines becoming larger and larger, there is need for increasingly larger test-benches -some examples are the recently built ones of Lindø Offshore Renewable Center (LORC) at Lindø Industrial Park in Denmark, ORE CATAPULT at its Blyth premises, or WINDBOX at the Basque Country- that in turn must carry out rather big testing campaigns. This process implies several disadvantages in terms of testing time, costs, and energy consumption. To tackle this challenge, the INNTERESING project is working on the development of a novel hybrid testing methodology and new design tools to assess reliability of larger wind turbine components, such as next generation gears or pitch bearings, without the need of building larger test benches. Advanced virtual testing capabilities increase agility and clarify technology roadmapping for future technologies, providing insight into the future. Combined with new material solutions, the result is a smart system which increases wind energy reliability while bringing development and cost advantages.