GE Vernova’s Offshore Wind business and UK-based Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult have signed a new research collaboration, building on the success of their previous ‘Stay Ashore’ program.
The £4 million agreement Monday paves the way for a multi-year collaboration between GE Vernova and ORE Catapult to create a dedicated research program to help drive down the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) for the global offshore wind market with reliable, enhanced, sustainable, and demonstrated technologies, ORE Catapult said.
The partnership will focus on enhancing turbine performance and improved operations and maintenance through smart technological solutions.
According to ORE Catapult, the previous program, 'Stay Ashore', successfully brought GE and ORE Catapult teams together, and has provided UK businesses, from micro-SMEs to large companies, with the opportunity to collaborate and develop products and services aimed at extending the life of offshore wind components.
"Stay Ashore delivered solutions for wind turbine digital twins and used data analytics to inform turbine operations and maintenance. The real-time data from over 70 operational wind turbines, together with virtual physics-based models for the turbine, were used to generate a cloud based digital twin, covering models for a multitude of wind turbine components and systems," ORE Catapult said.
"From robotic crawlers and new drone and sensor technologies, to cutting edge digital analysis tools, the Stay Ashore program supported UK SMEs in the development of further new products and services which have subsequently leveraged nearly £2m in funding and/or investment," ORE Catapult added.
Moving forward, ORE Catapult said, this new agreement will focus on some of the biggest challenges facing the industry in the future large-scale deployment of offshore wind and use applied research to enable the development of key innovations.