Austria hosts the third ROMEO Technical Committee Meeting

20/December/2018        

  The assembly was hosted the 11^th and 12^th of December in Uptime´s headquarters in Graz to perform a follow up of the project and define next steps

ROMEO project consortium partners have met the 11th and 12th of December in Austria to celebrate the third Technical Committee Meeting. The main objective of this internal meeting is to perform a follow up of the project and define the next steps in order to achieve the success of this initiative backed by the Horizon 2020 programme.

The assembly was hosted by Uptime Engineering, one of ROMEO Consortium partners and the leader of the work package 6, who provided their headquarters located in the Austrian city of Graz. During the meeting, all consortium partners and work packages leaders had the chance to show the project progress and coordinate the actions that will take place next year.

Adolf Burgstaller, Uptime director, welcomed the members of consortium in Austria. César Yanes, ROMEO Project coordinator (Iberdrola), was in charge of introducing the agenda of the event.

Presentations were carried out by the WP leaders of the project:: Indra, Iberdrola/Scottish Power, Siemens Gamesa, IBM Research Zurich, Ramboll, Uptime, Strathclyde University (new partner of the project) and ZABALA. The meeting also included an open space for discussions and a meeting wrap-up.

One year and half of progress

The partners had the chance to put in common the ideas about the main agreements achieved among them for developing the project and set down an overview of the project progress.

Among the most important conclusions of the meeting, should be highlighted the progress that has been developed in all technical work packages according to the foreseen schedule. Likewise, strategies and procedures to ensure a proper interaction between all of them were also improved. A total of 21 technical reports (deliverables) have been submitted to the European Commission to evaluate the progresses made. Some  of them, such as the 5.1 Architecture and Data framework that compiles the ICT architectures of the three ROMEO demonstrators: Wikinger, East Anglia ONE, and Teesside as well as the detail of each integrated component; and the 8.1 Review of existing cost and O&M models, and development of a highfidelity cost/revenue model for impact assessment, are public and are at disposal of the interested stakeholders on the ROMEO website.

The meeting also served to detail the new challenges that ROMEO project will face next 2019, conforming the next steps of all open work packages, thus contributing to the objective of generating the predictive models of O&M.

Work package responsibles also underlined the importance of interacting with other stakeholders of wind sector through participation in major events that are already confirmed by partners, such as Bilbao Marine Energy Week or the Wind Europe Conference and Exhibition, two main events that will take place next year in Bilbao.

About ROMEO Project

ROMEO Project (Reliable O&M decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on Offshore wind) is an initiative funded by the Horizon 2020 programme and its main objective is to reduce offshore O&M costs through the development of advanced monitoring systems and strategies, aiming to move from corrective and calendar based maintenance to a condition based maintenance, through analysing the real behaviour of the main components of wind turbines (WTGs).

The innovations developed within the R&D work packages will be tested in three use cases: Teeside (United Kingdom), Wikinger (Germany) and East Anglia ONE (United Kingdom), which are windfarms managed by EDF in the first case, and Iberdrola in the other two. This way, the benefits achieved will be demonstrated, and the future replication of the project in other wind farms will be ensured.

ROMEO is an industry-based consortium made up of 12 recognised and experienced key players from six different EU member states and one associated country led by Iberdrola. The consortium includes large companies (EDF, Adwen, Siemens-Gamesa, Ramboll, IBM Research Zurich, Indra and Bachmann), SMEs (Laulagun Bearings, Uptime Engineering and ZABALA Innovation Consulting) and the Strathclyde University, and will work jointly to benefit decision making processes of offshore WF operators.

This project is awarded by the European Commission with a Horizon2020 Programme grant of €10 million and a total budget of approximately €16 million running for 5 years (2017-2022).