FME- NORCOWE- Norwegian Centre for Offshore Wind Energy

Some highlights from NORCOWE NORCOWE has had 27 PhD students since the centre started in 2009. The center has organized a summer school every year from 2010 to 2015. The main goal has been to provide the PhD students with an overall understanding of offshore wind energy and to help them put their own work into a larger context. In May 2017 we had two persons who defended their PhD successfully: Peng Hou, AAU and Torge Lorenz, Uni Research and UiB. Eight other PhD candidates plan to finish their thesis in 2017. NORCOWE has meteorological and oceanographic measurements as one of its main areas. Measurement of the wake from single turbines and from wind farms, characterization of atmospheric stability, better description of wind profiles over the sea and not least, a better understanding of turbulence in the atmosphere and ocean are important topics. The center has executed three major measurement campaigns, of which two outside of Norway. In May 2015 NORCOWE started a comprehensive meteorological and oceanographic measurement campaign (OBLEX-F1) around the measuring platform FINO1 in the German Bight. An important issue has been to measure all relevant oceanographic and meteorological parameters. The campaign has received a lot of attention internationally and has already resulted in collaborative projects with German research partners. The campaign ended in September 2016. There is great interest in the data, and both industrial projects and research projects involving OBLEX-F1 data have been executed. NORCOWE?s industry partners have been keen on examining the knowledge gap that regards offshore turbulence, and this has influenced NORCOWE's work plans for 2016-17. NORCOWE and Statoil organized a workshop on turbulence in February 2016 which was very well attended. Part of the OBLEX-F1 measurement campaign was modified in order to obtain more results with regards to turbulence structures. NORCOWE partners together with German and American research partners have analyzed the data and the first results have been presented. OBLEX-F1 data has been used to examine the impact of different turbulence spectra on the loads on a spar-buoy floating wind turbine. Analysis of turbulence spectra and data has also been the focus at the University of Agder this year as well as at CMR. There was a workshop March 2017 to summarize the results from analyses of OBLEX-F1 data so far. A web portal is set up in order to make data facilitate extraction of OBLEX-F1 data. NORCOWE has defined a reference wind farm (RWF). This is a hypothetical but realistic wind farm offshore. NORCOWE RWF is used for case studies, e.g. to examine various solutions for cabling, which type of boats to be used for operation and maintenance, etc. Through various case studies, one can see the financial effects of the choices made and investigate what solutions that will be most optimal financially. The definition of the wind farm is made available to institutions outside NORCOWE through a dedicated web page. NORCOWE RWF is included and used in the IEA Wind task 37. Aalborg University took the initiative to establishing the NORCOWE RWF and has been heavily involved in its creation together with Uni Research. The WRF code is a Weather Research and Forecasting simulation tool that is open source and widely used within the research community as well as by the industry. Uni Research has previously contributed a module to this code for simulating the effect of wind farms. This year they have released a revised version of this module which is freely available from our webpage. We have gathered some popular science articles on the NORCOWE webpage which describe our work, and also recommend our annual reports which can be found there.

Todays offshore wind energy solutions are based on technology developed for onshore installations. Technology and concepts needed for deep waters and exposed areas are in an early stage and new and more cost effective concepts and solutions are needed bas ed on R&D and industrial innovations. This Centre consisting of R&D organisations and innovative industrial partners will meet this challange by focusing on the following topics: - Wind and ocean Conditions - Offshore wind technology and innovative conce pts - Offshore deployment and operations - Wind farm optimisations - Environment, safety and infrastructure - Education The Centre includes innovative partners from offshore industry, emerging offshore wind companies and energy companies, all seeing fut ure business opportunities in offshore wind. The Centre cooperates internationally, in particular with danish wind energy reseach by having Aalborg University as a research partner. The Centre will be organised with a strong administrative and scienti fic leadership, an executive board governed by industry and a user reference group and a scientifc committe that will assure industrial relevance and quality of research beeing performed. The Centre is planned for 8 years. The yearly budget is 40 MNOK, f inanced 50% by the Norwegian Research Council, 25% cash contribution from industry partners and 25% in-kind from all partners. 28 PhD students will be financed by the Centre, and a significant number of MSc students will benefit from supervision in the C entre. The Centre is managed by CMR and operated from Bergen. It has a virtual structure including research partners and facilities at different geographical locations along the costline of south-western Norway and northern part of Denmark. This area als o includes the testing site and infrastructure for deep water offshore wind energy (and other marine renewables) in Norway.