To achieve a thorough investigation for defect presence on a wind turbine blade, close inspection is required. This implies either trained staff tied with ropes on the blade or dismantling and transferring the blade in a workshop environment. While blade dismantling is scarcely used because it requires very long downtime, human inspection also involve a relatively high delay. A solution to this problem is to utilize specially designed platforms that can reach the blade and implement faster inspections on site. However, current systems are not very agile or cannot reach close enough to the blade in order to use a high quality nondestructive technique. Hence, they are mostly used to carry out mere visual inspections. To deal with the aforementioned challenge, our team will commercialize WInspector. WInspector consists of an agile robotic platform able to climb up the wind turbine tower and deploy an advanced Digital Shearography kit that carries out the inspection of a blade at a depth of up to 50mm. Users of WInspector benefit through early detecting emerging defects unseen in a visual inspection performed by competing solutions, with a significantly lower downtime for the WTB, and free of dangerous human labor. We have tested and validated the capabilities of WInspector in relevant environment and based on feedback received by wind farm operators, including project participant Gamesa and Iberdola (who has supported us in writing for this application), we are now ready to take the next steps and complete product development allowing us to bring WInspector into the market. Our vision is to grow our businesses by €19.88 million in gross sales by 2023 and keep growing at 58.8% annually from 2023 onwards. Through our business growth, we will create 181 new jobs. It is our strong belief that the Fast Track to Innovation Pilot is the ideal financial instrument for us to accelerate the procedures required for commercialization.

The objective of the FLOW project is to develop new and innovative prediction methods for production statistics and load performance of modern GW-scale and 400-metre tall offshore and onshore wind energy systems. Our project will develop more accurate methods as regards the present state of the art (SOTA) and with high confidence, thereby reducing uncertainties, increasing productivity and grid stability, lowering Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE), while establishing an open-source knowledge hub that will benefit the entire renewable energy sector and enable joint optimization between developers and OEMs. To reach these ambitions, FLOW will improve the knowledge of atmospheric flow physics and the interplay between wind farm (microscale) and large-scale (mesoscale) processes such as: wind farm global blockage, farm-farm interaction, and topographic and wake-added turbulence in complex terrain. Based on these principles, FLOW will develop and validate simulation tools that can be readily adopted by industry to lower economic uncertainties and enhance system reliability and power production, with wide economic and societal impacts. The proposed modelling framework will make extensive use of public experimental datasets to validate and train models within a FAIR data hub. The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA) database is the foundation to grow this innovative open-source ecosystem that links experimental data, flow models, and validation datasets for benchmarking and training. Industry adoption will be facilitated through a computationally efficient modular framework that allows scalability in a production environment. FLOW’s industrial partners, comprised of VESTAS, SGRE, GE, and EDF, will verify compliance with operational processes and test the framework using private datasets to extend the validation range and demonstrate the added value of our results at a wide European scale.

The objective of HIGREEW (Affordable High-performance Green REdox floW batteries) is to design, develop and validate and an advanced redox flow battery, based on new water-soluble low-cost organic electrolyte compatible with optimized low resistance membrane and fast electrodes kinetics for a high energy density and long-life service. The battery prototype engineering design will be twofold: affordable balance of plant to optimize performance through advanced control strategy to achieve an LCOS of < 0.10€/kWh/cycle at the end of the project and 0.05€/kWh/cycle by 2030 and designed for recycling, to maximize the recycling of the components. The consortium is formed by 9 partners coordinated by CIC Energigune, Spanish research centre, that will be the focus on electrolyte and algorithm development to maximise the batteries life span and minimise its LCOS. The development of advanced materials will be complemented with the University Autonomous of Madrid to improve membranes performance and the French CNRS research centre to optimize the electrode. The 3 key components will be tested and validated at lab scale and cell level with the collaboration of the University of West Bohemia (CZ). The stack engineering will be developed by C-TECH, UK’s SME specialised in electrochemical and electro-heating process equipment, that will work together with Pinflow to optimize active components at laboratory scale and battery stack design. The system design and scale up to manufacture a battery prototype of 5Kw will be done in collaboration between Heights, UK’s engineering, and Gamesa Electric, Spanish large industry leader in renewables. The battery prototype will be tested and validated in the pilot plant of Siemens Gamesa -third party linked to Gamesa- located in Spain. The testing and validation will be the focus on safety-hazards, LCA and LCOS. The exploitation strategy will be led by Uniresearch, who are highly experienced in EU projects. The project will last 40M with a cost of 3,7M€.