Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) has announced its research focus areas for the next 12 months. The OWA aims to reduce the cost of offshore wind, overcome market barriers, develop industry best practice and trigger the development of new industry standards.
A total of 15 common research and development projects have been identified as part of the second year of the fourth stage of the programme including:
- Logistics and operations and maintenance (O&M) – low emission vessels and offshore charging standardisation, and improved O&M and logistics strategies
- Cables – mechanical limitations of submarine cables, cable protection systems, lifetime extension of installed cables
- Electrical systems – High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC), condition-based monitoring, fault detection, grid stability studies
- Foundations – design guidance for pile installation in weak rocks, wave run-up forces on secondary structures, impact of more relaxed flange fabrication
- Yield and performance – continuation of work in mesoscale wake modelling, floating LiDAR for increasing hub heights
The core programme receives all of its funding from the industry partners. For larger joint industry R&D projects (‘discretionary projects’), public funding is often utilised from a range of governments, depending on the location of the project. Existing members of OWA are Total, EnBW, Equinor, Ørsted, RWE Renewables, ScottishPower Renewables, Shell, SSE Renewables, and Vattenfall.
