IDCORE CASE STUDIES 02 03 Technologies Institute IDCORE - WHAT IS IT? Contents The Industrial Doctorate Centre for 3 IDCORE - What is it? Offshore (idcore) trains research engineers whose work in 4 IDCORE - The partners conjunction with sponsoring companies aims to accelerate the deployment of 5 Offshore wind case studies offshore wind, wave and tidal-current technologies. This is to help meet the UK’s 7 Marine energy case studies ambitious renewable energy targets. Students undertake a four year full time course including time with a sponsoring company working on “real world” applications and research initiatives to obtain their doctorates. 04 05 Energy Technologies Institute IDCORE - THE PARTNERS OFFSHORE WIND CASE STUDIES

Funders – The centre is funded by the Industrial partners / sponsoring companies Client: Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Energy Technologies Institute (an industry Idcore student: Michael Smailes and UK Government partnership into low Cefas carbon energy) and the Engineering and EDF Energy Project purpose: the design of a new Physical Sciences Research Council (the E.ON hybrid high-voltage direct current UK’s primary agency for funding research GE & Alstom Energy transformer to be used in offshore wind in engineering and the physical sciences). farms FloWave TT This project is focused on the design of Academic partners / research facilities: Tidal Energy Ltd a new hybrid high-voltage direct current Siemens/MCT transformer that can be located within the University of Edinburgh Lloyd’s Registrar wind turbine blades themselves thereby University of TWI eliminating the requirement of an offshore University of Strathclyde DNV GL platform which in turn reduces production Sgurr Energy costs for offshore wind generation. It Programme partners – HR Wallingford (an Alba Turn has been modelled that a new design of independent research and consultancy transformer has the potential to reduce in civil engineering, environmental the capital installation costs of a wind hydraulics and the management of farm by 10-11%. water and the water environment) & the Scottish Association for Marine Science (an The project will test novel topologies independent marine science organisation (the arrangements of a network) before delivering research and education to building a large scale prototype. improve understanding and sustainable use of the marine environment). Client: EON Idcore student: Gabriel Marsh Project purpose: to undertake a structural load monitoring programme This research project has developed the tools and methodologies necessary to conduct a structural load monitoring programme on turbines used in an existing offshore wind farm.

It has identified fatigue life extension capabilities for specific structural components on existing turbines. These are expected to have a significant and positive impact on the operations and maintenance costs for the remaining life of the turbine structures. 06 07 Energy Technologies Institute OFFSHORE WIND CASE STUDIES MARINE ENERGY CASE STUDIES Continued

Client: EDF Energy Client: European Marine Energy Centre & FloWave Ocean Energy Idcore student: Rebecca Martin Research Facility Project purpose : to conduct a sensitivity Idcore student: Sam Draycott analysis of offshore wind operations and Project purpose: to develop an enhanced maintenance to identify their effects on menu of representative sea waters and full both the cost and availability of offshore wave characterisation for use in wave tank wind farms test facilities This project is demonstrating how Using existing facilities from both the sensitivity analysis can be incorporated European Marine Energy Centre and the into software models to help easily FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility identify which particular factors impact this project is helping increase operational the operations and maintenance of a understanding for tidal device developers particular wind farm. by improving the understanding of how to generate more realistic directional This information can then be used to complex sea states for testing purposes. reduce costs and/or improve availability for wind farms, helping to maximise profit It is hoped that with advanced testing margin for offshore wind operators. this will increase the confidence in the generation and validation of directional sea states in tank testing. Client: EDF Energy

Idcore student: Ajit C Pillai Client: Project purpose: integrating energy yield assessments and wake methodologies to Idcore student: Anthony Gray both assess and optimise offshore wind Project purpose: to create an operations farm layouts. and maintenance model to provide This project has developed a software tool confidence when analysing the lifetime to improve the design of offshore wind costs of a wave energy array farm layouts. It has explored the sensitivity This project aims to create a Wave Energy of the levelised cost of energy to the Array operations and maintenance model constraints of offshore wind farm design to provide additional confidence in the and established a methodology by which analysis of the lifetime costs of a wave the value of some of the more subjective energy array. constraints can be better understood. There are four fundamental research areas Its findings are being applied to real as part of the project – reliability data, offshore wind farms currently being weather data, maintenance information developed by EDF Energy and its parent and expected power output. company, helping to realise savings of over €10million through the optimisation of a farm’s electrical infrastructure. 08 09 Energy Technologies Institute MARINE ENERGY CASE STUDIES Continued

Client: Queens University Belfast Client: Alstom Idcore student: Laurie Wilkinson Idcore student: Alberto Perez Ortiz Project purpose: assessing the viability of Project purpose: to improve the accuracy the modular flap concept for use in wave of a tidal resource assessment at a strait energy convertors that is between an island and a landmass This project is seeking to assess the This project is seeking to increase the viability of the design of a modular flap understanding of the effects that energy concept as opposed to a rigid flap design extraction presents in the availability of in wave energy convertors. This is based tidal resources prior to the development around a device made up of individual flap of large tidal arrays. modules that share a common foundation which may improve power capture, Focusing on straits between islands reduce foundation loads and ultimately and landmass, the project is seeking to become more cost-effective to install and increase the accuracy in tidal resource manufacture. assessments. This should improve the understanding of the interaction between The assessment of the design is through energy extraction and the dynamics of the use of physical and numerical the site flow. This will hopefully help tidal modelling with the physical modelling developers in their future site selection being undertaken in wave tanks at Queens and array design to generate significant University Belfast. project cost reductions.

‘‘ I have learnt many transferrable skills which have made me a ‘‘ The IDCORE programme has provided me with the skills and better engineering professional ‘‘ confidence to find solutions to a wide range of problems ‘‘ 10 11 Energy Technologies Institute MARINE ENERGY CASE STUDIES Continued

Client: Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Client: Tidal Energy Ltd Idcore student: Kwaku Ampea Karikari-Boateng Idcore student: Magnus Harrold Project purpose: to develop and validate Project purpose: the development of a an accelerated life test plan for tidal control strategy that allows a user to make turbine drivetrains predictive corrections to a tidal turbine’s default method of operations This project aims to develop and validate an accelerated life test plan for tidal This project seeks to develop knowledge turbine drivetrains to compress the that helps protect the operation of tidal 20 year life of a turbine into a testing turbines improving their reliability and programme that takes a few weeks to fatigue life. carry out. The project has developed the in-house It is hoped that by accelerating the testing engineering capability at Tidal Energy process then the cost of the testing Ltd through the build of mathematical process can be greatly reduced, making models, improvements in data acquisition, the proposition more attractive.. At the the development of post-processing same time, reliability can be demonstrated and visualisation tools together with the over the full life span of a turbine. formation of test procedures for turbine This should ultimately, reduce operation operations. and maintenance costs, increase the availability of turbines, reduce the cost It is hoped the knowledge developed and of turbine insurance, help boost investor shared will increase investor confidence in confidence and increase competition in tidal stream technology moving forward. the market.

The research project has allowed me to be involved in the ‘‘ full process of assessment of a new concept. This has taught me to balance details with achieving the project goals ‘‘ For further information on Idcore: Professor David Ingram

Institute for Energy Systems School of Engineering The University of Edinburgh 0131 6519022 ‘‘ Such close collaboration would be very difficult in regular [email protected] PhD programmes ‘‘ Energy Technologies Institute 01509 202020 Holywell Building www.eti.co.uk Holywell Way Loughborough [email protected] LE11 3UZ @the_ETI

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