Emerging technologies as Offshore Wind Energy, demand new advanced solutions for reducing Operation & Maintenance (O&M) costs, as well as for performing the reliability and extended life-time of wind turbines (WT) and farms (WF). In this sense, ROMEO is a 5 years project whose main objective is to develop and demonstrate an O&M information management and analytics platform capable of improving the decision making processes of offshore WF operators allowing the transition from calendar base maintenance to condition-based maintenance strategies reducing significantly O&M costs. Thus, a flexible and interoperable IoT platform will provide an advanced analytics ecosystem to better understand the real time behaviour of the main components of the WTs under operation conditions; maximizing their life-time and reducing the need for maintenance, thus minimizing the OPEX which drastically impact on LCoE of offshore Wind Energy. The project has been structured in three phases: 1st phase “specifications” will pave the way for other phases, defining the specifications and requirements in order to develop a health monitoring strategy for the most relevant and critical components to be further considered. -nd phase “models/tools/database” will be devoted to the development of health monitoring systems, diagnosis and prognosis tools for failure detection both at WTG components and support structures level, feeding the development of a data acquisition and advanced analytics ecosystem. 3rd phase “O&M/rollout” will develop and deploy an O&M platform to be validated in three pilot scenarios, data that will serve as input for impact assessment with a special focus on LCoE and replicability. ROMEO consortium is formed by a well-balanced set of experts (12 entities from 7 countries) representing the whole offshore value chain (from WT components manufacturers and service providers through to WF operators) together with IT market leaders, thus ensuring that results will reach the market.

The ReaLCoE consortium is happy to submit a well-prepared proposal, founded on a highly experienced and tight-knit group in discussion since early 2017. ReaLCoE aims to accelerate a new generation of competitive and subsidy free clean energy from offshore wind energy converters (WEC) with a high performance 12+MW demonstration turbine. Our WEC technology platform developments are designed to be competitive and scalable, consolidating scientific knowledge and operational experience for a swift evolution towards 14-16 MW rated capacities. Today, only less than 30% of the cost for electricity from large offshore wind energy converters incur from the turbine itself. ReaLCoE will work to optimise innovation across the whole value chain; from initial turbine design to equipment handling in the port, to testing, financing installation and the final customer to substantially reduce the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCoE) of offshore wind. The consortium is led by a pioneer in the sector, Senvion, who has brought together some of Europe’s most experienced and talented actors in both on- and offshore wind energy to demonstrate a 12+MW WEC. After a period of strong market consolidation, Senvion and its partners aim to jointly enter a competitive market of offshore wind energy in the 12+MW turbine class. We are confident that ReaLCoE will have a global impact on offshore wind energy market, reinforcing Europe’s technological leadership and bringing growth and job opportunities to the industrial base. Not only in the wind energy sector through the manufacturing, installation and operation of 12+MW WEC in a competitive environment; but also through the provision of cheap, clean energy across an integrated system of renewables. This paves the way for a turbine generation with rated capacities of 14-16MW and triggers hundreds of millions in investment into the European clean tech sector.