NOWITECH Innovation Award: The winners are….

The NOWITECH Innovation Day set focus on innovations in offshore wind technology presenting for the first time the NOWITECH Innovation Award. The purpose is to stimulate and reward knowledge-based innovation and/or entrepreneurship within the field of offshore wind energy, and help identify ideas with commercial potential.

NOWITECH has innovations for reducing cost of energy from offshore wind as a key target, and had by end of 2014 a total of 36 innovations at various stages of development in terms of Technology Readiness Level. These are all presented in the NOWITECH 2014 annual report.

(…)by end of 2014 a total of 36 innovations at various stages of development

A step change innovation

The NOWITECH Innovation Award consists of a diploma and a cash prize of NOK 10 000. The call for nominees was published 29 April 2015 and open for all affiliated with NOWITECH. All received nominees by deadline 1 June 2015 was assessed by a committee of experts from industry and research, namely: Oddbjørn Malmo, Kongsberg Maritime, Daniel Zwick, Fedem Technology, Per Arne Wilson, NTNU/chair NOWITECH CIC, and myself.

The committee received 6 nominations for the NOWITECH Innovation Award 2015, and all satisfied the criteria for the award, i.e. potential for cost reduction of offshore wind energy, degree of novelty and commercial viability.

The choice of the winner among these was not easy, but the committee reached a unanimous decision.

The winning innovation represents, when fully developed, a step change in offshore wind turbine technology

The winning innovation represents, when fully developed, a step change in offshore wind turbine technology, enabling the power from large offshore wind turbines to be transported to shore without the use of any expensive offshore substation.

The winners are….

The nominees have carried out critical work in bringing this innovation forward as part of their PhD work at NTNU, and it is now with great pleasure with can announce that the winner of the NOWITECH Innovation Award 2015 is Sverre Gjerde and Pål Keim Olsen for their work on high voltage DC generator technology for offshore wind turbines. The winners will share the price of NOK 10 000,- and each receive a diploma stating them as NOWITECH Innovation Award winners of 2015.

The two award winners have demonstrated the technology in laboratory scale, see picture below, and their work is well documented, see e.g. PhD thesis by Sverre Gjerde and papers by Pål Keim Olsen. Pål is scheduled to deliver his PhD thesis by end of 2015.

Their work has been inspired and carried out with support mainly from NTNU, SINTEF Energi, SmartMotor and the Research Council of Norway. The support to their work is greatly acknowledged.