News & Events
Innovative solutions to reduce offshore wind energy operation and maintenance costs
27 | 01 | 2022
● Ceit has organised a free online workshop to disseminate the results of Watereye, a European project led by the centre with the aim of developing solutions to minimise the costs of offshore energy.
● The event will be held on 4th February and different representatives of Watereye will be participating to explain the most prominent solutions developed within the project.
Operation and Maintenance (O&M) tasks represent the main cost for the offshore energy sector, not only due to the complex accessibility to the wind turbines but also due to the environmental conditions where the wind turbines are located, which cause corrosion. These costs may reach up to 30% of the levelized cost of energy (LCoE) for an offshore wind farm (WF). This percentage is even higher in platforms far from the coast. For this reason, it is essential to develop innovative solutions that are capable of supplying electricity at a cost-effective rate for companies in the sector.
In order to reduce the cost of such tasks, which affect hundreds of companies from the offshore energy sector, the European Watereye project kicked off in November 2019, an initiative led by Ceit Technology Centre and involving an international consortium made up of companies and centres associated with the sector: Delft Dynamics and TU Delft, The Netherlands; Semantic Web Company, Austria; Sintef Industry, Norway; Flanders Make, Belgium; Cobra and Plocan, Spain.
The main objective of the Watereye Initiative, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, is to reduce O&M costs through an accurate control and monitoring of the structural health of offshore wind farms. More specifically, innovative solutions are being developed within the framework of this project to foster the supply of electricity at cost-effective rates. The deployment of innovative monitoring systems allows for a more accurate prediction of the degradation rate of offshore structures due to corrosion.
To explain the main results and developments obtained within the project, Ceit technology centre has organised a free online workshop that is open to the general public, which will be held on Friday, 4th February. During the workshop, which will be in English, different representatives of the Watereye international consortium will present some of the solutions that have been developed within the project and which seek to optimise the maintenance tasks of offshore wind farms, minimising costs. If you are interested in finding out more about the latest developments in offshore wind energy, register via this link.