Latest News & Project Updates

Hello and welcome to the STEP4WIND project newsletter.

Time flies when you’re enjoying your research work! STEP4WIND has just reached its first milestone year of the project, and together with the European Commission, consortium partners and early stage researchers (ESRs), we looked back at the last 12 months and showcased what we have achieved so far.

At the 12-month review, the ESRs were able to provide a sneak preview of their research work for the coming years. In addition, the Project Coordinator, Axelle Viré, highlighted some of the valuable synergies made with sister projects and events where STEP4WIND played a prominent role. It is never too early to start spreading the word to the wide audiences.

Find out what other key achievements the project has made over the past 12 months in the newsletter below. We’re looking forward to further progress the valuable synergy initiatives planned for the coming months!

1. Meet the STEP4WIND Early Stage Researchers
2. Big Data Management Training
3. Changes to Project Partners and Beneficiaries
4. Latest Events and Publications
5. Step4Wind Open Science Training
6. MSCA Fellow of the Week - Omar Ibrahim

Meet the STEP4WIND Early Stage Researchers

The success of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network (MSCA ITN) project relies heavily on the Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). The project aims to prepare these young researchers for successful careers and in doing so, equip them with what is needed to take on the challenge of their individual projects. In STEP4WIND we have 10 ESRs on board coming from all over the world, having various backgrounds of knowledge and expertise.

The kick-off meeting for the ESRs was held remotely in February 2021. Representatives of all the Beneficiaries and some Partner Organisations attended  where each PhD candidate gave a short presentation about their background and projects, which led to fruitful discussions and the identification of new synergies between the researchers.

Now it’s time for the ESRs to start putting in motion what they have committed to, with the beneficiaries sharing their knowledge, supporting them and creating new networking opportunities.

Big Data Management Training

Data has become an important asset throughout the lifecycle of offshore renewable energy projects. In order to ensure that Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the STEP4WIND project understand the types and sizes of data available in offshore renewable energy, as well as how the data could be managed and used to add value to the industry, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult has developed a series of data training  to be given to all the researchers in July 2021.

The topics covered in the data management training are:

1. Floating offshore wind introduction, condition monitoring & surveying

2. Robotics and autonomous systems in offshore wind
3. Market & financial analysis
4. Development & consenting
5. Data flows

You can learn more on ORE Catapult's POD, the dissemination Platform for Operational Data, that supports innovative research, projects and product development through data provision to academics, researchers and the wider community in pursuit of growth opportunities in renewable energy.

Changes to Project Partners and Beneficiaries

Photo: Øyvind Gravås - Statoil - Hywind Scotland last turbine sail away from Stord

Although not directly linked to the COVID-19 outbreak, STEP4WIND has experienced several changes during this year in the composition of its consortium. Due to internal restructuration, Principle Power France withdrew from the project back in August 2020, while the expertise initially located at the Siemens Gamesa Denmark office has moved to the French office, creating in this way some ESR shifts and Beneficiary swaps.

This has resulted in an active search to ensure the same knowhow for the ESRs and has created an opportunity to come in contact with valuable Partner Organisations (PO) that would maximise the project’s impact, while providing the ESRs with a truly diverse and wide-reaching network. The key role of POs in ITNs is in complementing the Beneficiaries by providing specialised training to the recruited ESRs and even hosting them during internships, so-called secondments.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome five additional POs to the project since April 2020 who will undoubtedly add significant value in equipping the ESRs with the needed skills and environment of expertise that complements that of the Beneficiaries.

The new POs are: Technical University of Denmark (DTU), INSA Rouen Normandie, Ideol, Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions (GDG), Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy Denmark.

Latest STEP4WIND Project Events and Publications

 Photo courtesy of Principle Power. Artist: DOCK90 - WindFloat Atlantic final hookup at Viana do Castelo, Northern Portugal

Participation in the ECFD4 workshop, March 2021

The 4th edition of the extreme CFD workshop, organised by one of our new associated partner INSA CORIA (France) took place on 22nd-26th March 2021. ESR, Likhitha Ramesh Reddy, and Project Coordinator, Axelle Viré, took part in the event with a project on wave-structure interactions for a moving structure. This intense week of code developments led to new features in the CFD model YALES2, as well as new collaborations between STEP4WIND researchers and the YALES2 community.

Participation in IEA Task OC6 coordinated by NREL

TU Delft and MARIN are participating in the OC6 task from the International Energy Agency. In particular, both beneficiaries submit results on the CFD modelling for the aerodynamics and hydrodynamics of a floating wind turbine, including comparison with wind tunnel and wave tank data, respectively. Our PhD candidates Likhitha Ramesh Reddy (ESR1) and Ricardo Amaral (ESR2) are active in the task. TU Delft also coordinates a CFD sub-group in Phase III of this task.

Participation at Wind Energy Science Conference, May 2021

This year’s Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) brought together over 700 wind energy scientists, engineers, managers, you name it! The STEP4WIND ESRs made their debut on the international conference stage, with presentations covering a range of topics, including: Multi-scale hydrodynamic modelling of floating offshore wind turbines; Aerodynamics of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Undergoing Large Motions; Feature Selection and Model Reduction for the Design of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines and so much more. 

Participation in 8^th Annual ERBE-LoLo Conference, May 2021

Omar Ibrahim (ESR 10), participated in the ‘8^th Annual ERBE-LoLo Conference for Early Career Researchers: How the Built Environment can Contribute to the Clean Energy Transition’. The focus of the event was revolving around the upcoming COP26 hosted in Glasgow, as such it targeted researchers with research interests or expertise in the areas related to the COP26 themes. Omar presented his current research in coupling floating offshore wind with green hydrogen production and transportation within STEP4WIND in the theme ‘Energy Transition’ and was able to get more visibility for his research work within different backgrounds.

Publication

The project coordinator published a paper on vortex-induced vibrations for wind turbine towers, in a work conducted in collaboration with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (The Hague) prior to the recruitment of the early-stage researchers. The paper is available freely online > 

STEP4WIND Open Science Training

Hywind Scotland floating offshore wind farm (Credit: Equinor, Øyvind Gravås - Statoil)

The first module of the STEP4WIND training package began on the 19th May and aims to foster the academic philosophy of knowledge without barriers, known as Open Science. This course is part of a series of modules which were thought of as way to increase and diversify the soft-skills and hard-skills acquired by each ESR.

We know our ESRs had extra work on top of their already hard doctoral thesis but it is important to increase awareness about Open Science as this will benefit the whole society and boost scientific and social progress in the future!

The modules include: 

• Theoretical principles and empirical evidence of its positive impact;
• Data management of research data;
• Open access publishing options, care to be taken while choosing them and tools for finding such options; and
• Tools for creating and managing Open Software OR tools and actions to take to increase research visibility.

MCSA Fellow of the Week - Omar Ibrahim

Omar Ibrahim, one of the STEP4WIND project ESRs, has been crowned the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fellow of the week in May 2021. This is an outreach initiative for MSCA fellows to share their research work within MSCA’s social media channels to gain more visibility for their work and projects, and network with other researchers as well.

Omar presented the STEP4WIND project and explained the supervision collaboration between University College Cork and ORE Catapult in his PhD. He is dedicating his PhD project around coupling floating offshore wind with green hydrogen production. 

© STEP4WIND2020

All rights reserved. Any duplication or use of objects in other electronic or printed publications is not permitted without the author’s agreement. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860737.