Key data
Duration: 36 months
Overall budget: 4M €
Demonstrators: Évora and Nantes
Goals
Durable aims to boost the competitiveness of the local renewable energy sector in the Atlantic area and its strategic position worldwide.
The project will create an innovative institutional and technical cooperation network that will reduce the operation & maintenance (O&M) costs in renewable energy production. Durable will focus on reducing inspection/surveillance & repair costs by technology cross-transference from aerospace, robotics composites and additive manufacturing sectors to renewable energy.
Partners will create a unique whole value-chain network that will merge key technological and institutional actors from these four critical sectors. They will transfer and adapt previous innovative developments and already available breakthrough technologies to address the problem of reducing inspection & repair costs in renewable energy systems, focused on Solar and Eolic infrastructures. Project results will improve regional energy production conditions for solar and wind energy producers leading to a better position of the Atlantic Area in renewable energy.
Aerospace and robotic technologies together with composites and additive manufacturing, will be interweaved to produce full innovative solutions for more efficient energy production. The use of support robots on solar panels and windmill engines will boost these clean energies in the area. DURABLE will help to overcome one of the main barriers, in the use of renewables, related to the costs of O&M activities.
Highlights
- Leaded by ESTIA (Ecole Supérieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées).
- NEW R&D participate in the following work packages: Project Coordination, Project Communication, Capitalization, Joint mapping of technologies and expected needs for O&M in solar and wind energy production, Adaptation of technologies for navigation and surveillance, Adaptation of technologies for maintenance and repair, Mock-up and solution operation on pilots’ sites: PV, onshore and offshore wind case studies.
Demonstrators
It will be demonstrated the real impact and advance of the technologies developed in other work packages for O&M in real conditions in wind and PV farms belonging to VALEMO and EDP and located in the Atlantic area, preidentified sites being PV Plant of Monte das Flores (Évora, Portugal) and in Nantes for wind (France). These pilot demonstrations will result in recommendations for further technological developments, as well as for easier and increased adoption of advanced inspection and maintenance technologies in the renewables sectors. A model wind blade available at ALERION premises will be used to de-risk the technologies before moving on site.
The first step will be the design of pilot operations accounting for the final technologies used and tested in the other WPs and the characteristics of the host wind / solar installations. Detailed procedures ensuring a safe and secure environment will be elaborated, together with a test program enabling a full technological and economic assessment of the solution. This will be done both for solar and wind assets. This activity will also benefit from the portfolio of assets of partners EDP and VALEMO, which will bring to the table its experience of diversified situations. It must be emphasized here that all the results obtained for wind are directly transferable to off-shore assets. It’s been a choice of the consortium to focus on on-shore wind for economic reasons, off-shore interventions being much more expensive.
Role NEW R&D
EDP CNET will be acting on behalf of the PV plant operator (which is owned by an affiliated company, EDP Renewables) to grant access to the facilities and support the demonstration pilot.
The main activities will focus on WP1 (management), WP4 (expected needs for O&M in solar and wind energy production) and WP7 (solution operation on pilot sites).
In WP1, EDP CNET’s scope will mainly be on project management, progress assessment and monitoring and attendance of project meetings.
In WP4, EDP CNET will contribute to the definition of the future needs in O&M in wind and solar plants. This action will benefit from EDP’s extensive experience in O&M of RES units worldwide, as well as from the accumulated experience both previous R&D projects in the topic.
WP7 will concentrate the bulk of EDP CNET’s participation in the project. EDP CNET will primarily focus on the validation/demonstration in the solar demo, providing access to the PV plant facility in Portugal for all the testing and will support execution of the tests. EDP CNET will also revise the conclusions and insights yielded from these tests, contributing to the definition of the implementation of novel O&M solutions – providing the valuable perspective of the PV plant operator and future user of robotic O&M operations.
Partners
