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GEV Wind Power is one of Europe's leading wind-turbine maintenance companies with teams working on more than 40 wind farms both on and offshore every year. With a presence throughout Europe and North America, GEV Wind Power is a truly global service provider. We understand that it is important to wind energy maintenance companies to find new ways of delivering core services to reduce the cost of energy provision. To realise this vision, we commit significant financial resources to in-house R&D and are constantly looking at technologies that fit well for Wind Energy. We have now developed a patented habitat solution that retrofits to market available access platforms. This creates the perfect protective working environment for blade maintenance and repairs to be completed. Maintenance productivity is increased and, with the added benefit of 24 hour working, GEV Wind Power are able to eliminate the cost uncertainty of weather downtime and will help wind farm owners reduce maintenance costs, improve Annual Energy Production (AEP) and the competitiveness of wind generated energy. Trials completed onshore with our Ventura Habitat prototype using two different access platforms (Power Climber and Kaeufer) in varying weather conditions and ranging between 30 metres and 100 metres high, with successful deployment demonstrating the flexibility and operability of the Habitat in a real-life environment. The overall objective of this development project is to create a commercially ready Ventura Habitat system, with validated results through field trials. This will enable us to achieve our overall commercial objective to become the leading blade maintenance services provider in Europe and North America. We forecast a total revenue of €20 million and a profit of €5 million 5 years post-commercialisation, with a breakeven on investment after 3.43 years and an ROI of 150%.

AWESOME network aims to educate eleven young researchers in the wind power operation and maintenance (O&M) field by constructing a sustainable training network gathering the whole innovation value chain. The main EU actors in the field of wind O&M have worked together, under the umbrella of the European Wind Energy Academy (EAWE), in order to design a training program coping with the principal R&D challenges related to wind O&M while tackling the shortage of highly-skilled professionals on this area that has been foreseen by the European Commission, the wind energy industrial sector and the academia. The overall AWESOME research programme tackles the main research challenges in the wind O&M field identified by the European wind academic and industrial community: (1) to develop better O&M planning methodologies of wind farms for maximizing its revenue, (2) to optimise the maintenance of wind turbines by prognosis of component failures and (3) to develop new and better cost-effective strategies for Wind Energy O&M. These main goals have been divided into eleven specific objectives, which will be assigned to the fellows, for them to focus their R&D project, PhD Thesis and professional career. The established training plan answers the challenges identified by the SET Plan Education Roadmap. Personal Development Career Plans will be tuned up for every fellow, being their accomplishment controlled by a Personal Supervisory Team. The training plan includes intra-network activities, as well as network-wide initiatives. The secondments at partner organizations and between beneficiaries are a key attribute of the training programme. Each fellow will be exposed to three different research environments from both, academic and industrial spheres. All the network activities will be developed in accordance with the established in the Ethical Codes and Standards for research careers development, looking therefore for talent, excellence and opportunity equality.

Conventionally designed wind turbines only operate efficiently in steady, uninterrupted air. However, most users want to access wind in urban areas or near industrial units where the nature of the wind is more turbulent and swirling. Conventional designs do not work efficiently with the swirling, variable nature of wind at such sites. In this project Swift Energy present a radical re-design of a vertical axis wind turbine, with key technological improvements that will allow efficient operation in small-footprint, urban sites. Such sites have the added advantage that they are close to consumers, minimising transmission losses. WindSurf is a vertical axis, active pitching wind turbine. Swift's patented control technology uses servomotors to continually alter blade pitch, which allows self-starting in wind speeds as low as 3m/s, and optimised energy capture in free and turbulent wind streams. Edinburgh's role in this project is to produce an optimised design of the electrical generator for the WindSurf rated at 16kW, taking into account the environment in which it will be operating. A direct drive generator will be used to eliminate the gearbox, which will improve reliability and efficiency. Both of these contribute to LCOE: reliability through increased availability and reduced OPEX; and improved efficiency will enhance annual energy yield. An air-cored permanent magnet generator will be designed and built that is optimised for the structure of the Swift wind turbine. In order to achieve such an optimised design an integrated design approach is required, which links electromagnetic design, with structural design and thermo-fluid design. Edinburgh has built up 10 years of experience in the integrated design of direct drive permanent magnet air-cored generators for wind and marine renewable energy applications. Air-cored machines eliminate undesirable magnetic attraction forces that try to close the gap, and thus this topology benefits manufacture, assembly and structural design. A vertical axis wind turbine allows the electromagnetic design of the machine to have a large diameter, out near the blades. A large diameter will result in high airgap velocity and thus have a positive impact on torque density (Nm/kg), reducing the amount of active material, which is the most expensive part of the machine. A novel structural arrangement will be developed for integration into the turbine, which where possible makes best use of the existing structural material, again to minimise material usage and thus cost. A modular design approach will be adopted to ease manufacture and assembly of the generator, but also to make O&M easier. By positioning the generator close to the blades, we will investigate we will investigate methods of "scooping" air from the turbine onto the generator to assist with cooling. Effective cooling will benefit the torque density and the overall performance of the machine. Numerical modelling tools will be used in the design process, such as ANSYS for structural analysis, StarCCM for thermo-fluid analysis, and Infolytica for electromagnetic design. An existing analytical design tool will be refined based on the structural and CFD modelling in order to assist SWIFT in the future design and production of their turbine. Multi-body modelling using SIMPACK will be combined with structural modelling to investigate the impact of environmental loads on the generator in terms of airgap deflection. Once the design is finalised, the machine will be built under subcontract to Fountain Design Ltd, with whom we have worked in the past to build prototype generators. The machine will be tested at the University of Edinburgh on its wind-emulator test rig to verify performance and the design tools developed. A thorough integrated design approach with manufacturing and production techniques in mind supported by laboratory testing will ensure that SWIFT can move towards commercialisation.