AFLOWT project partners were busy kicking off 2023. We are delighted to share some recent good news – The OPEN-C Foundation was created in March. It is a high impact project which contributes to a more rapid energy transition and to enhancing France's position on these strategic issues. This partnership foundation, coordinates, develops and manages offshore tests.
Congratulations to Open C, we hope they will soon become an AFLOWT project partner.
SEAI is currently developing a marine renewable energy site off the west coast of Ireland. Work continues on site development at AMETS in Co. Mayo, Ireland. The Site Investigation licence was awarded on February 10th and survey work is ongoing. The final EIA Report will be delivered in Q2 this year. The tender to procure a Project Engineering Management Consultant company for the AMETS Substation build went live in March and closed in early April, currently SEAI are assessing the tender bids). A Floating Lidar System (FLS) is required to measure wind speed and direction at various heights. This data will be used by technology developers when they are designing the devices and planning their test at the site. Suitable technologies include floating offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters. The tender process has begun for the Installation, Operation, Maintenance and “Data as a Service” of a Floating Lidar System at the Atlantic Marine Energy Test Site. Once the successful tenderer in chosen, the FLS will be deployed at AMETS, where it will collect the metocean data required.
Fraunhofer IWES, together with UCC and SEAI, have disseminated further surveys for Floating Wind Technology Developers and Floating Wind Farm Developers and also held interviews, feeding into the survey results on technology investability and maturity. Fraunhofer IWES, furthermore, has provided input on a supportive policy environment and shared information and experience with German policy on (floating) offshore wind. The reports being finalized by UCC, Fraunhofer IWES and SEAI. On 18th April, the 4th advisory board meeting took place with all project and associate partners. This meeting focused on updating partners on what has happened in the last one and a half years of AFLOWT, on the new project investments, and on the planned work within this final year of the project.
Fraunhofer IWES and MARIN have jointly started working on the new investment on advanced model tank tests. Within this work the structural flexibility should be taken into account already in scaled model tests, as the aeroelasticity may have a more significant impact on the floating wind turbine system when considering larger wind turbines. An online workshop for exchange of information and detailed planning of the upcoming work was held between MARIN and Fraunhofer IWES on 17th April.
In first months of 2023, FEBUS Optics has conducted a continuous monitoring along the cables connected to the floating offshore wind turbine FLOATGEN at SEM-REV in Le Croisic, France.
The company has performed a simultaneous DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) and DTS/DSS (Distributed Temperature / Strain Sensing) monitoring over 3 months. This monitoring gives information about the temperature of the cables according to the electrical production but also all the mechanical and acoustic events that occurs close to it. This measurement completes the one performed in 2022 at EMEC test site in Orkney and gives a comparison of the signal measured in different environments. Results will promote the usefulness of fibre sensing technologies for the operation and maintenance process of future floating offshore windfarms.
As part of the updated AFLOWT scope, MARIN is upgrading their wind generation test set-up from 4mx4m to 6mx6m or 7mx7m for improving the testing capabilities of very large floating wind turbines. The CFD simulations used to validate the wind setup are being refined with wind measurements taken from a detailed measurement campaign in Q1 2023. The results will improve the accuracy of the simulations to support the design of the improved wind setup. The upgrade will enable MARIN to accurately test larger models of floating wind turbines, providing more accurate data on their performance. The improved testing process will help to accelerate the uptake of the floating offshore wind industry, providing more renewable energy sources while reducing the carbon footprint.
Consortium member Mareike Leimeister of Fraunhofer IWES participated in a panel discussion at the final event of the COREWIND project, with COREWIND and FLOATECH projects representatives. The theme was Similar objectives, different findings? The video is available on YouTube: COREWIND Final Event - 26 April 2023 - YouTube
Meet us!
AFLOWT partners will be attending Oceans 2023 next week and SEANERGY on 19th June. We hope to see you there.
Thanks for your time,
The AFLOWT Team.
