The SmartTip concept has the potential to reduce the cost of wind energy per year. The project ran from 2017 till 2020 and explored the design and testing of blade tips for wind turbines which can increase the existing rotor size, producing more energy per year, while mitigating loads in a smart way.Blade tips were designed through multi-fidelity surrogate aeroelastic model based optimisation, which resulted in a potential load neutral Annual Energy Production increase of 4-6%. Tip prototypes were manufactured and tested in the Large Scale Facility, in the Poul la Cour wind tunnel and in atmospheric rotating rig tests at DTU. Innovationsfonden invested 10,8 mil. kr. in the project which was a collaboration between DTU Wind Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy in Denmark.
