- We will participate in a research environment where focus on developing wind turbine technology will be the main task, which again can lead us to long-term thinking and build up a larger research community, says Roy Stenbro, head of section of Energy Systems at IFE. Stenbro adds that IFE has executed research on wind turbines for 30 years and has a fundamental knowledge on the subject to base further research upon.

The new Centre for Environment-friendly Energy Research will receive the total amount of 320 MNOK for the next eight years for its research programme.

The illustration shows some of the offshore wind concepts under development, StatoilHydro, Sway and WindSea

What will IFE’s role be in this research programme?
- We have some areas that we will focus on. In example tools for simulating offshore wind turbines, development of turbine blades, new turbine undercarriages and evaluation and improvement of different concepts, says Stenbro.

What will the biggest challenges be?
- The challenge for us will be to develop wind turbines which do not require maintenance in a large scale. This can be very expensive offshore, and one must take into account long periods of bad weather making it difficult to board the turbine from ship or helicopter, adds Stenbro.

Energy for the future
Offshore wind technology is predicted a promising future, and it is estimated that within the EU alone, as much as 1000 billion NOK will be spent on this energy source over the next decade.
- However, to make this a successful commercial product, we need to focus on the price on the turbine itself, and find ways for reducing maintanace costs, emphasises Stenbro.

The new Centre for Environment-friendly Energy Research, shall use existing knowledge, research and results to develop the technology further, with the use of laboratories to large scale offshore field experiments. A combination of knowledge of wind energy and offshore experience will become the centre’s main focus to reach its goal.

27 organisations participate in this research programme. The centre implies a sharing of labour between IFE turbine modelling, SEFAS-generator, elnett/MARINTEK-offshore constructions, SINTEF Material composites and corrosion.