GROW-to-GO

The moment the rotors begin to spin, you can feel it: the promise of doing things differently. In this new edition of  GROW‑to‑GO , host  David de Jager  visits the Pilot-CD-project at  Drone Port Reusel  to explore how innovation is quite literally taking flight. Joined by  Thijs van ’t Geloof  and  Wouter Kloppenburg  from  Ampelmann , the conversation zooms in on a deceptively simple idea with...

Reimagining the offshore energy system  Offshore wind delivers large volumes of renewable electricity, but the system behind it must be able to cope with mismatches between supply and demand. FlexH2 addresses this challenge head-on. Guus Pemen, Dongsheng Yang of TU Eindhoven and Yin Sun of both Shell and TU Eindhoven explain the core difficulty and introduce you to the FlexH2 demonstrator, a big s...

All preparations for the first offshore demonstration of the Vibrojet® monopile installation technique are in full swing when we meet Hein van Opstal, Paula van Lieshout and Pierre Bouchet of GBM Works. In ‘Go With the Flow’ you learn more about the technology, challenges and collaboration behind this promising technology for quieter, more efficient monopile installation at the Mammoet shipyard in...

Visiting the SIMOX Demonstration Site Get an update on the SIMOX project. David de Jager visited the specially prepared SIMOX demonstration site at the Port of Amsterdam to meet two key people involved in the project: Ahmed Elkadi and Mark Post, both from Deltares. They tell you more about the activities of researchers and industry partners, who are installing and testing monopiles, side by side,...

Removal of old monopiles At the end of a wind farm’s lifetime, everything has to be removed. Current practice is to cut the monopiles that support the wind turbines several meters below the seabed. In the second Hydraulic Pile Extraction Scale Tests (HyPE-ST 1.2) project, Anderson Peccin da Silva and Alba Rodríguez Piedrabuena, both from Deltares, are investigating a new hydraulic pile extraction...

Increasing the reliability of rotor blades In the last two decades, the length of the rotor blades for offshore wind turbines has increased significantly. Where we started with blade lengths ranging between 30 and 40 metres, we are now reaching 110-120 metres in length per blade, and this may go up towards an impressive 150 metres in the future. Despite efforts to improve control over the manufact...

It's all about a safe tool for repair of rotor blades. Imagine that your wind turbine is installed offshore and provides significant amounts of wind energy. But then, one of the wind turbine's blades requires maintenance, or worse, gets damaged. You cannot simply take your ladder and climb up there to make the repairs like you would at home. So, Jeroen Tol and Wouter Kloppenburg from Ampelmann int...

Optimise the usage of space at the North Sea The North Sea seems empty, but nothing could be further from the truth. The sea is divided into parts, and each part has its destination, such as fishing, shipping routes, nature protection, mining, defence, etc. So, since the available space is limited, we need to work together if we want to tap into the vast potential of offshore wind energy. Listen t...

Introducing a revolutionary connection design that is set to transform the monopile installation process – and morePresenting a simple yet revolutionary way to install monopiles, endorsed by industry leaders. Jan van der Tempel, CEO at Delft Offshore Turbine, and Sander Suur, design manager at Van Oord, share their insights on the simplicity and success of the slip joint technology in offshore win...

Rocks barely sound interesting, yet they are essential for the stability of wind turbine foundations. After all, they are used to prevent the erosion of sand around the monopile. Currently, the installation process of the scour protection requires three steps. Therefore, the Optimising Pile Installation through Scour protection (OPIS) project is researching how to improve this process. The researc...

Extreme conditions… in an extremely short timeframe The Tubular Pile Pull-out Testing (TPPT) project impressively manages to mimic the conditions at sea for open tubular piles used for the mooring of floating wind turbines. Jan Kenkhuis explains: “Can we use open tubular piles for anchoring large floating wind turbines to keep the floating wind turbines on location in a harsh environment? That’s w...

One ring to install monopiles faster, cheaper, and more silently. You’d expect the fabrication of equipment for the installation of large monopiles for offshore wind turbines to occur in or near a harbour close to the North Sea. But, instead, Hein van Opstal, Charlotte van Verseveld and Rob Sprij, all working at GBM Works, can be found at the firm Kersten in Wanssum, Limburg, next to the Maas rive...

Developing the ultimate weather atlas for rain and wind in the North Sea A meeting with Iratxe Gonzalez Aparicio and Harald van der Mijle Meijer at the beach near Bergen aan Zee in the Netherlands on a sunny January day in 2023. To talk about rain and wind in the North Sea. Why? Because the PROWESS project is investigating the relationship between rainfall at the North Sea and the observed damage...

Testing with piles in water and sand to understand the soil around monopiles. It sounds like a beautiful beach day: playing around with water and sand in an environment that cannot be taunted by rain. But doing so can result in more than just sandcastles. As the size of offshore wind turbines increases, monopiles get bigger as well. New installation technologies are currently being investigated, f...

More energy through dynamic control over the wind flow inside an offshore wind farm “Wind turbines love a steady, constant, homogenous wind flow pattern. A wind turbine extracts energy from the wind. The wind pattern it leaves behind, downwind, is rather messy and turbulent. This is called the wake. Suppose a second wind turbine captures the wind in the wake of the first one. In that case, it will...

Offshore wind and the winning tickets for the coming years “The offshore wind sector is entering a new phase requiring a massive manufacturing and installation scale-up. Building a subsidy-free offshore wind farm should not mean that the companies involved make losses. We have to be economically sustainable as an industry. Therefore, it is vital to innovate to reduce costs further.” Says Jan van d...

Meet the team who loves spinning around monopiles. The monopile foundations of wind turbines are subject to repeated (cyclic) loading by wind and waves. These forces are transferred from the foundation to the supporting soil, in a way that may affect the stability of the whole system. As the longer-term impact of cyclic loads is not yet fully understood, monopiles still tend to be designed on the...

Improving wind measurements to optimise power performance. To gain the most power from the installed wind turbines offshore and onshore, they must operate at their absolute best. That's why the Sensor Assisted Wind farm Optimisation (SAWOP) project was initiated. Koen Hermans (TNO) and Jan Coelingh (Vattenfall) explain how SAWOP will help prove that nacelle LiDAR and spinner sensor technologies ca...

Innovations are needed if the offshore wind sector wants to install the huge foundations for the ever-larger wind turbines, as quickly and with as little noise as possible. Well, “The Gentle Driving of Piles (GDP) concept tends to just do that,” Andrei Metrikine (TU Delft) confidently states. “This is because GDP uses vibrations, in two directions, with different frequencies, one of those being si...

How to prevent damage to rotor blades Rotor blades are made of strong materials that look indestructible, yet they get damaged by water and that costs a lot of money. Harald van der Mijle Meijer (TNO), and Julie Teuwen (TU Delft), put on their rainboots to research how rain impacts the wind turbines’ rotor blades. The goal? To get more insight into how the damage of blades evolves and even better:...

How to combine the best features of all materials and put it together in large structures. Offshore wind support structures make a significant part in the total cost of an offshore wind turbine. They continuously need to cope with a wide range of forces from wind, waves and currents, over the full lifespan of the project. Marko Pavlović, assistant professor at TU Delft, and Maxim Segeren, managing...

Steel does not “react that optimal” to these offshore conditions that cause degradation. The corrosion of monopiles, a threat to the future of offshore wind? Senior scientist Richard Pijpers and project manager Joke Luyten, both working at TNO, want to improve the design and optimise maintenance of monopiles. How? To get a better understanding of the degradation – caused by corrosion and fatigue –...

Offshore wind installations might be a wonderful solution to a serious problem for humans, the underwater sea life is now negatively impacted instead. Linda Kemp, project manager at MARIN shows how bubbles can prevent wind turbine installation noise that harms sea life. This is, she stresses, a “really nice topic to work on”, and it’s especially “fascinating to do new things, with an aim to protec...

Offshore wind energy has gone through tremendous developments in recent years. Innovation was a key driver for its success. If offshore wind wants to make a lasting contribution to the energy transition, the sector must continue to innovate. David de Jager of GROW - a consortium with a joint research program in offshore wind - gives you in this podcast series an impression of the key research and...