The European ‘INNTERESTING’ project is underway

The project is coordinated by the Technological Research Centre IKERLAN, and has a budget of €4.75 million from the EU’s H2020 Research and Innovation Program. The project kick-off meeting took place 15-16 January 2020 at KU Leuven facilities, Belgium.

The goal of INNTERESTING is to develop a disruptive methodology to demonstrate the reliability of larger wind turbine critical components without the need of building larger test-benches in the future, by overcoming size-dependent issues during design process and testing.

In comparison with current testing methodologies based on large-scale component validation, a key objective of INNTERESTING is to reduce considerable environmental and economic impact and to improve social acceptance of the newly developed INNTERESTING solutions and testing methods.

Post-2020 Renewable Energy Directive includes a binding renewable energy target of 32% for the EU by 2030, with an upwards revision clause by 2023. To achieve this target, both new and existing wind turbines will need to be improved.

A considerable proportion of the existing EU wind fleet will come to the end of its lifetime between 2020 and 2030, so the current market trend for the development of new wind turbines is to make larger, more powerful turbines with a longer lifetime.

The product development process (PDP) relies on a validation method that combines physical and virtual testing. While more advanced virtual modelling techniques are becoming available, it is still necessary to perform large-scale physical tests to demonstrate the reliability of new and larger wind turbine components. The full-size physical tests are the final step and the most expensive and time-consuming part of the PDP. To deal with bigger wind turbines, such critical tests require increasingly larger and more expensive test benches.

It is therefore essential to provide European companies with the most advanced testing methodologies and to design tools to help them find innovative solutions and bring them faster to commercialisation. INNTERESTING proposes a hybrid methodology and disruptive design tools to demonstrate the reliability and lifetime extension of large wind turbine components. This will eliminate the need for larger test-benches in the future.

The INNTERESTING methodology will help to save time and money during the PDP by integrating virtual testing and hybrid testing. It is expected that this will reduce environmental and economic impact, and it also improve social acceptance.

The INNTERESTING project is formed by a consortium that brings together eight partners from three European countries:

• Three research and development centres: IKERLAN (project coordinator, Spain), VTT (Finland), VITO (Belgium) and one university, KU Leuven (Belgium), bringing their specific developments from TRL2 to TRL4.
• Two manufacturers of wind turbine components (end-users of the technology designed): LAULAGUN (Spain), with experience in the manufacture of large bearings for both onshore and off-shore wind turbines, and MOVENTAS (Finland), a company that develops and manufactures wind turbine gearboxes and related technologies.
• One global player in the field of Computer-Aided Engineering simulation and testing solutions: Siemens Industry Software (Belgium).
• One non-profit private industry-driven organisation that integrates wide variety of stakeholders in the value chain of the energy sector: Basque Energy Cluster (Spain).

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/wind/28012020/the-european-innteresting-project-is-underway/