offshore wind report
Delivering Ireland’s offshore wind ambition
Ireland’s offshore wind capabilities are evolving rapidly Ireland’s capabilities around the rapidly developing offshore wind (OW) energy are evolving fast and in a wide range of sectors. This development is often preceded by strategic research involving extensive collaboration between industry and academia within and outside the island, writes Vikram Pakrashi, Associate Professor at University College Dublin. There is an active involvement of the funding bodies within Ireland and in the EU to support such research and the niche skills, insights, knowhow, and technologies developed will bolster a strongly bourgeoning area of employment. Operations, maintenance, and lifetime performance of offshore wind seem to dominate this theme. While manufacturing of offshore wind turbine is typically carried out by large international companies, lifetime maintenance and performance related aspects are typically carried out by local, or smaller companies. This is an opportunity for Ireland since several of these aspects require advanced and multidisciplinary understanding of the design and performance of offshore wind turbines, along with their monitoring, measurement, and subsequent assessments. The need for complex modelling, understanding of new materials and designs, monitoring through sensors, along with related data analytics also makes it well aligned to the highly educated workforce of Ireland with a
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focus on digital solutions. These are areas where it is also possible for Irish companies to be competitive globally. Energy has remained a core vertical for UCD, and offshore wind continues to be a priority area of focus. In the coming five years, research in UCD’s Energy Institute (UCD-EI) on offshore wind will investigate several fundamental and applied aspects in offshore wind which will evolve many nascent concepts towards industrial practice. A range of interconnected works will address the reduction of lifetime cost and risk of offshore wind technologies and operations for reliable, long-life, cheaper, hazard-aware, and resilient electricity. This will be achieved by assimilating fundamental physics with engineering, climate research and data. Through the all-island NexSys project, funded by the Science Foundation Ireland, philanthropy and several industries, this research will: •
establish bespoke operations and maintenance (O&M) tools for OW via
