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Wind energy is the fastest growing renewable energy source in Europe, accounting for 10.2% of total electricity in 2015, however there is still a need to reduce the overall cost of energy – CoE to increase its competitiveness. The capital costs represents 78% of CoE and can be broken down into several categories, with around 54% attributable to wind turbine, from which the blades represents 30%. CoE can be reduced by maximizing energy production for the site by installing larger turbines. However, as the length of current rotor blades increase, their associated cost and weight increase at a faster rate than the turbine’s power output. Furthermore, as blades get longer they are becoming increasingly more difficult to manufacture and transport setting the limit at 90m. Winfoor (WF) and Marstrom (MC) aim to pursue this market opportunity by bringing to market its innovative and ground-breaking blade technology – Triblade. Triblade is a “3-in-1” modular blade, built as a Composite Material Truss that will allow rotor blades to be longer (up to 50%), stiffer (up to 290%) and lighter (up to 78%), whilst reducing around 65.2% production costs and increasing ease of transport and installation resulting in up to 15.5% CoE reduction. These are game changing improvements that can play an important role in driving the development of next generation of larger turbines and accelerate the transition to greater use of renewables worldwide. TRIBLADE project is expected to significantly enhance WF&MC’s profitability, with expected accumulated revenue of €85M and profits of €40M, 6 years after commercialization. Moreover, the successful achievement of TRIBLADE objectives is expected to assist Europe in achieving objectives to secure a sustainable energy system based on a low-carbon electricity from wind. This project will therefore entail increased competitiveness for the SME value chain and for the EU as a whole.

The overall objective of WinWind is to enhance the socially inclusive and environmentally sound market uptake of wind energy by increasing its social acceptance in 'wind energy scarce regions' (WESR). The specific objectives are: screening, analysing, discussing, replicating, testing & disseminating feasible solutions for increasing social acceptance and thereby the uptake of wind energy. The proposal considers from a multidisciplinary perspective the case of WESR in DE, ES, IT, LV, PL and NO. These selected countries represent a variety of realities ranging from large (but with WESR) to very scarce wind energy penetration. WinWind analyses regional and local communities´ specificities, socioeconomic, spatial & environmental characteristics and the reasons for slow market deployment in the selected target regions. Best practices to overcome the identified obstacles are assessed and – where feasible – transferred. The operational tasks are taken up by national/regional desks consisting of the project partners, market actors and stakeholders in each country. The project´s objectives will be reached by: i) analysing the inhibiting and driving factors for acceptance, ii) developing a taxonomy of barriers to identify similarities and differences in development patterns , iii) carrying out stakeholder dialogues in all participating regions, iv) developing acceptance-promoting measures that are transferable to specific local, regional and national contexts, and v) transferring feasible best practice solutions via learning labs. WinWind develops concrete solutions. The activities focus on novel informal/voluntary procedural participation of communities, direct and indirect financial participation & benefit sharing. Finally, policy lessons with validity across Europe are drawn and recommendations proposed. Already 62 stakeholders and market actors provided letters of support showing their commitment in supporting the WindWind activities and in implementing useful results.

FloatMast is a floating platform that performs the best wind data measurements for the most promising and advanced Blue Energy activity, Offshore Wind Parks (OWPs). These wind measurements are vital for the cost benefit analysis of OWPs as they are used in the estimation of the annual income. Moreover, the wind measurements are also critical to the definition of the Operation and Maintenance costs as they are used in the design specification of the OWP’s turbines, towers and foundations. The wind measurements collected by FloatMast are according to the highest industry standard (IEC 61400-12-1) and provide the greatest net benefit to the Developers of OWPs. It can perform wind measurements at a 70% lower cost, by combining the best features from the two existing solutions: the meteorological mast and the Lidar remote sensor device on a stable floating platform. Furthermore, it is re-usable and provides the added value of being re-deployed in other locations of interest. It can be used at all stages of the life cycle of the OWP, from the design phase to the development and operational phase and until the decommissioning phase, twenty years later. Moreover, the platform can perform multi-purpose measurements as it can incorporate oceanographic instruments and environmental sensors, providing a fully integrated solution for a complete monitoring of the OWP site. The innovation has been developed by two Greek SMEs, it has been patented and certified, tested in a tank test at a 1:25 scale model, constructed at 1:1 physical scale, launched to the sea and conducted a series of tests with perfect compliance. The design and hydrodynamic behavior of the platform have been proven and the next stage involves enhancements and upgrades. Finally, the platform must undergo a demonstration phase in the operational environment in order to provide the needed verification of its operational capabilities and advance the already 2,3 m Euros investment to the commercialization phase.

An estimated 1 billion people worldwide are living in rural areas without access to electricity. In these rural areas, economic, geographic and political factors all combine to make local generation the most effective method for improving electricity access. In developing countries with appropriate geography, hydropower is one of the most economical methods for local generation. Nepal has the second richest hydropower resource in the world and with many people living in rural areas there is a requirement for local generation. In Nepal, there are at least 1800 micro-hydro power (MHP) plants generating 25MW of power. These turbines (with rated power less than 100kW) are manufactured and installed by small and medium size enterprises based across Nepal. The Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) officially recognises over 75 companies as qualified or 'provisionally qualified' to build and install MHP turbines. The process of qualification does not regulate the overall quality of each project and there are no particular national standards to adhere to. Once commissioned and handed over to a community, operation and maintenance is typically carried out by a trained operator. Whilst the training is comprehensive, the quality and regularity of maintenance is highly variable. The results of poor maintenance and system quality are under-performance, improper operation and in worst cases, system failure. Previous research has suggested that the quality of all aspects of turbine installations in Nepal is highly variable. Without standards in place, there is no means to manage the quality of installations completed by micro-hydro manufacturers. Complacency during feasibility studies leads to incorrect sizing of turbines resulting in low load factors and operation away from rated power. In addition, poor education results in consumer misuse which can exacerbate technical problems. Field based research will use site assessment and questionnaire surveys to assess the technical and social performance of micro-hydro plants. Issues identified during the field testing will be used to make a targeted study of all stages in a project process at a micro-hydropower manufacturer. Concurrently, the understanding of the complete design life cycle will be used to find opportunities to introduce greater quality assurance and standardisation. Through modelling and parameterised CAD, a standardised prototype will be developed for environmental conditions typical in Nepal. A hydrodynamically scaled version of this will be tested to ascertain its applicability for use with a range of heads and flow rates.

Solar energy, attractive source of energy being it free and endless, can be converted into electricity by means of a Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant. However, the biggest limit of such technology is the intermittency and the diurnal nature of the solar light. For their future development, CSP plants need to be coupled with storage system. Among the existing thermal storage systems, the ThermoChemical Storage (TCS) is one of the most promising technology and it is based on the exploitation of the reaction heat of a reversible chemical reaction. Just recently, perovskite systems have drawn increasing interest as promising candidates for TCS systems. Perovskites are generally indicated as ABO3, with A and B the two cations of the structure and with O the oxygen. They exhibit a continuous, quasi-linear oxygen release/uptake within a very wide temperature range. Their reduction being endothermic consists in the heat storage step, while the exothermic oxidation releases heat when it is required. The overall objective of the proposal is to study more earth abundant compositions (Ca-, Fe-, Mn- or Co-based) of perovskites for identifying one or more promising candidate storage medium for the design and the realization of a prototype of a multilevel-cascaded TCS system. It aims at solving the no-easy solution problem of the wide temperature range to be covered by a TCS system for CSP plant by using perovskites with different operating temperatures cascaded from the lowest operating temperature to the maximum one. As main result it could bring the TCS systems to a level closer to the market scale. The research project will be developed in collaboration with the IMDEA Energy Institute and the Materials Science and Engineering Department of Northwestern University. This project idea is totally in line with the current strict global energy and environmental politics and also with the Horizon 2020 objectives.