Wind News

Monday 08 February 2010

10 consortia to benefit from £3 million pot to stimulate innovation for the offshore wind industry in the North of England

Ten bidders are set to benefit from a £3 million fund intended to stimulate innovation for the offshore wind industry in the North of England.

The Northern Wind Innovation Programme (NWIP) has revealed the names of those it has chosen to support in the fields of AC/DC electrical conversion, foundation system optimisation and installation technologies, and bearing quality improvement.

From almost 30 applications received, 10 consortia made up of 38 UK companies have been selected.

According to NWIP, they all demonstrated excellent standards in innovation in support of the offshore wind industry.

The successful projects and their collaborative partners include:

• Composite Metal Technology Ltd, the University of Durham, David Brown Gear Systems and Ricardo UK Ltd;
• David Brown Gear Systems and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne;
• Ricardo UK Ltd, The University of Sheffield and Roballo Engineering Ltd;
• Romax Technology Ltd and the University of Sheffield;
• Siemens Transmission Distribution and the University of Manchester;
• Siemens Wind Power and The University of Sheffield;
• TWI, the University of Manchester, Monitor Coatings, McNulty Offshore, VattenFall Wind Power;
• TWI, RCID at Newcastle University, SEtech Ltd, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, McNulty Offshore Construction Ltd, VattenFall Wind Power, Scottish Power UK plc and Clipperwind plc;
• TWI , University of Sheffield, CMR (UK) Ltd, SKM, James Walker, Applied Inspection Ltd, and Le Carbone (GB) Ltd;
• Xanthus Energy Ltd, Able UK Ltd and Ekspan Ltd

The team from NWIP is planning to continue to support the sector by stimulating innovation, providing support to companies looking to diversify and by providing marketing information.

The NWIP Programme is funded by The Northern Way - a partnership of the three northern regional development agencies; One North East, Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and Yorkshire Forward - and is being delivered by the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) and Envirolink Northwest.

It is part of Solutions for Business, the government's package of publicly funded business support designed to help companies start and grow.

Projects

One of the projects which has received funding under the Programme includes Xanthus Energy, Ekspan and Able UK's plan to deliver an accelerated offshore wind turbine assembly and installation factory.

The factory will build foundations for offshore wind turbines and the consortia claims that assembling the foundations onshore means reduced costs due to a single trip installation process. Foundations are currently only assembled offshore.

Siemens and the University of Sheffield - which have formed the Siemens Sheffield Wind Power Research Centre - will be using their share of the money to conduct research activities in multi-megawatt energy conversion systems for future offshore wind turbines.