EERA DeepWind offshore wind R&I conference gathers record crowd

The 20^th edition of the EERA DeepWind offshore wind R&I conference was a resounding success. The 2023 edition of the event took place on 18-20 January.

It started with a plenary session featuring a series of keynote speeches. First up was State Secretary Elisabeth Sæther, of the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, who officially opened the conference. She outlined the government’s plans for offshore wind in the coming years. Then, SINTEF CEO Alexandra Bech Gjørv gave an overview of her research institute’s work with offshore wind research. She called for the establishment of a European Centre of Excellence on offshore wind energy to solve research challenges and help making offshore wind a pillar of the European energy system.

NorthWind centre director and EERA DeepWind conference chair John Olav Tande then outlined the progress that’s been achieved in the last 20 years, and what this experience can tell us about what we can expect in the next two decades. He was followed by Jon Dugstad, director at Norwegian Energy Partners, who presented a Global offshore wind market status and outlook.

Then, University of Bergen (UiB) professor Finn Gunnar Nielsen, presented a deeper look into floating offshore wind technology. He reminded the audience that the cost reductions that were experienced with land-based wind, and are expected to happen also for offshore wind, depend on volume and not time. “You need to think in terms of gigawatts of capacity installed, not years passing, when considering what actually makes cost reductions happen,” he said.

Next, Hannele Holttinen, Operating Agent, Grid Integration Task 25 of IEA Wind, and partner at Recognis Oy, explained the challenges related to balancing large amounts of variable wind power.

Kristian Holm, Technology Director at Equinor, talked about industrialising offshore wind. He went over the history of floating wind, starting with the Hywind demo, and then going on with Hywind Scotland and the recently started Hywind Tampen – all of which Equinor is deeply involved in.

Building offshore wind on a massive scale at the European level will require lots of experts and engineers in the field. The challenge of educating the experts the industry needs was described by Charlotte Bay Hasager, professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

NINA researcher and NorthWind WP5 co-lead Roel May then held a presentation about environmental design. He talked about the importance of minimising the negative environmental impacts of wind farms per KWh of electricity produced.

Next, Ignacio Martí, director of EERA JP wind, described the current international collaboration taking place currently in Europe within the field of offshore wind research. Like Alexandra Bech Gjørv, he called for the creation of a European Centre of Excellency on offshore wind energy. The objective would be to solve the research challenges related both to scaling up offshore wind, and to integrating large amounts of power it will produce when built on a massive scale.

Keynote speakers

The conference presented a top roster of keynote speakers.

	Elisabeth Saether, State Secretary, Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy
	Jon Dugstad, Director Wind at Norwegian Energy Partners (NORWEP)
	Ignacio Martí, JP Coordinator, EERA JP wind
	Finn Gunnar Nielsen, Professor at UiB and Head of Bergen Offshore Wind Centre (BOW)
	Geir Olav Berg, CTO and SVP engineering at Aker Offshore Wind
	Catherine Banet, Professor of Law, UiO
	Charlotte Bay Hasager, Professor MSO in Offshore Wind Energy Meteorology, DTU Wind Energy
	Kristian Holm, Technology Director, Renewables, Equinor
	Hannele Holttinen, Operating Agent, Grid Integration Task 25 of IEA Wind
	Knut Vassbotn, CEO, Deep Wind Offshore
	Jacob Edmonds, ETIP Wind Deputy Co-Chair and Senior Director, Ørsted
	Roel May, Senior Research Scientist, NINA
	Joanna Ines Martin, Graduate Wind Farm Engineer, Ørsted Services AS
	Jose Luis Domínguez García, Group Leader of Power Systems, IREC
	Alexandra Bech Gjørv, CEO, SINTEF
	Trond Kvamsdal, Professor at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, NTNU
	John Olav Tande, Chief Scientist at SINTEF and director of the NorthWind research centre

A wide range of research topics

Presentations during the conference covered an array of topics, from structural design to wind farm control, environmental impacts and regulatory framework.

Conference topics:

• New turbine and generator technology
• Grid connection and power system integration
• Met-ocean conditions
• Operation and maintenance
• Installation and substructures
• Marine operations and logistics
• Wind farm optimisation
• Experimental testing and validation
• Wind farm control systems
• Societal impact and controversies
• Environmental impact
• Legal and regulatory framework

Finn Gunnar Nielsen awarded the first EERA DeepWind Science and Innovation Award

Finn Gunnar Nielsen, professor at UiB and Head of Bergen Offshore Wind Centre (BOW), was awarded the very first EERA DeepWind Science and Innovation Award on Thursday night, the second day of the conference. The newly created award will be given to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to offshore floating wind technology. Finn Gunnar Nielsen participated in the very first DeepWind conference, in 2004, and was central to the success of the research and development leading to the very first full-scale floating wind turbine, Hywind Demo.

Poster awards

The poster award for Best Content was given to Jannis Wacker, from DTU, for his poster titled “New model for structural optimisation of airborne wind energy systems with rotary transmission”.

Two Poster awards were given for Best Communication. One to Thomas Messmer, of the University of Oldenburg, for his poster titled “Overview of the potential of floating wind in Europe based on metocean-data derived from ERA5-dataset”; the other to Sithik Aliyar, of DTU, for his poster titled “Upending of Spar type FOWT in waves: A numerical comparison with time-domain and frequency-domain solvers”.

Sithik Aliyar, DTU, also award winner for Best Communication, was not present to receive his prize.

The conference featured a total of over 80 presentations and 125 scientific posters and gathered a record number of participants.

Learn more

• EERA DeepWind website
• EERA DeepWind 2023 roundup on the NorthWind website