DNV GL Awards Young Wind Energy Professionals

DNV GL today announced the winner of its 3rd Annual Wind Energy Award at the EWEA 2014 in Barcelona.

The prize is designed to promote young industry talent and help close skill gap in wind energy industry.

The winning diploma thesis by Christian Hermann outlines a practice-oriented solution into transportation systems for offshore wind parks by developing an innovative software tool.

Themed “Innovative ideas for wind energy”, DNV GL’s Awards are designed to recognise and reward young industry professionals’ forward-looking concepts and creative ideas for new technical approaches to research and development within the wind industry.

As the offshore wind industry continues to pick up pace, finding qualified experts with the required technical and practical knowledge is becoming increasingly challenging. Promoting young talent to pursue a career in the wind energy sector is crucial to ensuring future innovation and the sustained technical progress of the industry. DNV GL’s Wind Energy Award is testament to the company’s continuous commitment to investing in the promotion of young talent, rewarding academics in their research endeavour on subjects challenging the wind energy industry.

Taking away the 5000 Euro first prize this year was Christian Hermann for his paper on ‘Analysis and modelling of maritime transport concepts for route and mission planning of operational and maintenance of offshore wind parks and its software technical implementation’. Andreas Schröter, Executive Vice President Renewable Certification at DNV GL presented Christian with his prize along with Tom Probst (second place) and Roderick den Ouden (third place), as part of an official ceremony at DNV GL’s stand at the EWEA in Barcelona. The feasibility, economic benefit and original quality of all three papers were highly commended.

Andreas Schröter, Executive Vice President Renewable Certification at DNV GL commented: “The wind energy industry is becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, requiring expert technical knowledge to keep pushing the boundaries. Having reviewed the award entries this year I’m filled with confidence that the next generation of wind energy engineers will more than live up to that challenge. The number and quality of entries demonstrated an outstanding breadth of creativity, adding real value to concrete challenges the wind energy is facing.”

He continued: “Christian Hermann’s 1st prize paper offered compelling problem-solving approaches to key objectives in the current offshore wind industry, making a valuable contribution to the reduction of CO2 emissions and reducing the risk of lives within operation and maintenance of offshore wind parks. By developing a software tool for the offshore wind industry, the paper provided an innovative and practice-orientated method that demonstrated an outstanding level of detail, covering all means and aspects of transportation, transfer and access.”  

The second place went to Tom Probst’s paper on ‘Service Life Analysis of Grouted Connections for an Offshore Wind Energy Plant’. His master thesis provides insight into of the structural behaviour of grouted connections used for offshore wind turbine structures, a very topical subject due to current challenges related to some offshore wind farms in operation. The modelling of the grout material with the ATHENA software under consideration of the post-cracking behaviour is a sophisticated analysis and further to the technical challenge the results are presented in a clear and precise way in the thesis.

Winner of the third price is Roderick den Ouden for his work on ‘Conceptual and Control Design of a Wind Turbine Blade Installation Tool’. In his thesis, Roderick den Ouden has studied an innovative technique for installing blades on offshore wind turbines, which has the potential to make offshore wind park construction more flexible and less costly. His theoretical approach is of high quality, while at the same time adding recognisable value to the design process of the regarded mechanism, making it a convincing piece of engineering work.

Press release, March 12, 2014; Image: DNV GL