Innovation Manager Mike Newman on secondment at Fraunhofer IWES
This week, whilst on secondment to the Fraunhofer IWES, I attended the Research at Alpha Ventus (RAVE) conference on the Bremerhaven seafront. The evening event in the Klimahaus was also particularly topical and interesting – a chance to get an appreciation for the effects of climate change as you follow a journey around the world along the 8th degree of longitude.
At the conference, it was great to see such a large quantity of R&D from both industry and academia being undertaken on the Alpha Ventus wind farm. It is initiatives like these that truly drive forward our collective understanding of the innovation challenges associated with the next generation of offshore wind technology.
Topics of particular interest included data benchmarking, novel approaches to wind measurement and new offshore wind logistics concepts. All of which are being measured in this year’s Cost Reduction Monitoring Framework (CRMF) study, a follow on to last year’s report. Great to see at the RAVE conference the progress we are making internationally on these topics.
Next week I will be visiting the Fraunhofer IWES, institute for wind energy and energy system technology in Kassel to continue my work out here on operations and maintenance R&D project development.