International cooperation on offshore wind

The cooperation will focus on industry’s challenges in offshore wind energy and create a strong partner for the industry for research and development.

Strong partnership on offshore wind energy R&D

Two of the largest wind energy partners in Europe, Danish DTU Wind Energy and Norwegian SINTEF Energi AS, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 19 January at the Deepwind conference in Trondheim. This is the first step towards a strong partnership on offshore wind energy R&D.

The University of Trondheim NTNU and other parts of the Sintef Group, e.g SINTEF Ocean, are going to be involved in the forthcoming development of the partnership, which will focus on three major wind energy areas:

• Offshore Network Development
• Windfarm Control
• Substructures for Offshore Wind Turbines

Industrial challenges on offshore wind

With the partnership, the parties want to focus on industrial challenges for offshore wind energy . They will create a strong industry partner for the research and development areas needed to develop better and cheaper solutions.

Peter Hauge Madsen, Head of Department at DTU Wind Energy, says the following about the new partnership: The partnership is a big step in the right direction. It gives us an obligation to cooperate and coordinate in some important areas. At the same time, we get a common roadmap for research in the three selected areas. There is no doubt that international cooperation will become even more important in the future. We are therefore pleased and proud that we are able to conclude this cooperation with SINTEF, which has strong competencies and activities on offshore wind energy.

John Olav Tande, Chief Researcher and Research Director at SINTEF Energy, says: We know DTU well from many jointly successful projects related to wind power, and we are now taking a natural next step to enhance the cooperation. I am proud of, and pleased with, the agreement we have concluded with DTU Wind Energy, and I look forward to the further cooperation. DTU is a world leader in wind energy.

At the same time, we also have strong competence in the field, which means that we can achieve a better result and benefit the industry through the partnership.

The cooperation between SINTEF and DTU Wind Energy does not exclude cooperation with other parties, says Peter Hauge Madsen and John Olav Tande.