19/April/2022
ROMEO Project, an European initiative backed by the H2020 programme, presented at Wind Europe 2022 in Bilbao its innovative technologies to reduce the O&M costs of offshore wind farms and extend their lifetime
Three emblematic offshore wind farms, Wikinger, East Anglia ONE and Teesside, have been the demonstration spaces of ROMEO Project during the lifetime of the European initiative backed by the Horizon 2020 programme. The main results obtained from the tests and optimizations of the innovations of the project were presented the 6th of April on the latest edition of Wind Europe 2022, held in Bilbao.
The partners of ROMEO showed in the framework of WindTalks for Innovation how predictive maintenance strategies for wind turbine generators (WTG) and offshore substructures, together with the use of new technologies such as digital twins and IoT platforms, can considerably reduce the O&M costs, especially in offshore wind farm, and contribute to apply different strategies to extend the lifetime of these energy installations.
Scheduled at 09:00 A.M., the session started with a presentation of the project and the results obtained in the three demo sites. César Yanes, from Iberdrola Renewables and coordinator of the initiative, remembered the strong support of the European Commission and the role of every partner that contributed to the success of the initiative, including the commercialization activities that will follow to the end of ROMEO.
Other members of the consortium presented the innovative technologies that have been developed during the lifetime of ROMEO and how these solutions can help to achieve the condition based maintenance of the offshore wind industry.
For instance, Sofia Koukoura, from the partner Scottish Power, talked about the importance of both physics and data-driven models for improving maintenance strategies of offshore wind farms; and Carolin Wendelborn, from the partner Ramboll, gave an explanation about the role of true digital twin technologies to increase the lifetime of offshore wind installations.
On the other hand, Moritz Gräfe, from Uptime Engineering, explained the IoT platform developed during the project and its flexibility to integrate different kinds of data and make it available for further analytics and calculation of certain KPI’s. And Athanasios Kolios, from Strathclyde University, showcased that the results of ROMEO will be applicable to the technologies that will be introduced into the market, into the industry in the next 5 to 10 years.
In addition, all the partners that took part in the workshop organised in the Wind Europe Conference & Exhibition agreed on the fact that these kinds of innovations and technologies are the necessary tool to clear the path for the decarbonization and electrification of the European Union and the offshore wind industry.
After five years of collaborative work, ROMEO Project (Reliable OM decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on offshore wind), an initiative backed by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, has developed and demonstrated an O&M information management and analytics platform, capable of improving decision making processes for offshore wind farms.
ROMEO’s consortium brings together several European partners and all of them were at Wind Europe 2022 in the final event of the project: Iberdrola, Siemens Gamesa, EDF, RAMBOLL, IBM Research – Zurich, MINSAIT INDRA, BACHMANN Monitoring, LAULAGUN Bearings, UPTIME Engineering, University of Strathclyde and ZABALA Innovation Consulting.