A new European FP7 project, LEANWIND, which commenced in December 2013, received funding of €10million from the European Commission.
The project seeks to address inefficiencies in logistics and transport issues for offshore wind installations and so contribute to the reduction of costs. LEANWIND was awarded to a consortium of 31 partners from 11 countries and is led by Beaufort Research in University College Cork (UCC) Ireland. The project has a total value of €15million, and will run for 4 years.
The project’s work programme will apply “lean” principles to streamline procedures and develop new technologies and tools to improve efficiency, and will thus address current and future industry challenges to help make offshore wind a competitive source of energy. The focus of the work will be in the areas of substructure and vessel design, wind farm logistics and economics, Operation & Maintenance, Health & Safety and business models.
The work includes developing new vessels and equipment similar to those designed and built by LEANWIND partner Arklow Marine Services and looking at the use of ship bridge simulators for training such as those installed in the National Maritime College of Ireland.
Several Norwegian companies will also contribute to the project: Kongsberg Maritime AS, Norsk Automatisering AS, SINTEF Energy Research and MARINTEK that will make key contributions in the areas of ship transport systems, cost optimization and maintenance technology.
Norsk Marinteknisk Forskningsinstitutt AS (MARINTEK) has the technical management of LEANWIND and is also contributing with research on maintenance technology and ship transport systems.
Press release, February 10, 2014; Image: © Gary O’Neil