ORE Catapult, University of Sheffield and GE Form Powertrain Research Hub

The University of Sheffield has been named as the academic partner in the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s newest Research Hub, focusing on offshore wind turbine powertrains. The University is world-renowned for its expertise in the fields of electrical machines, power electronics, controls and energy conversion and storage and will contribute a minimum of £1.7m over five years.

GE Renewable Energy will also contribute £500,000 over a four-year programme supporting a number of research projects.  This allows the university to significantly increase its contributions.

The Powertrain Research Hub (PTRH) will support the development of future technologies for larger turbines and research solutions for improving turbine reliability and availability. The Hub’s key objectives are:

• Reliability improvement and advanced test methodologies.
• Advanced health condition monitoring and prognostic technologies.
• Development of next generation powertrain components for larger sized wind turbines.

Research will focus on minimising human interventions throughout the life of the wind turbine, an area of research that has attracted the support of GE Renewable Energy as it is a good fit with its recently announced ‘Stay Ashore!’ research collaboration with the Catapult, aimed at minimising the time people have to spend offshore.

Paul McKeever, ORE Catapult’s Head of Strategic Research, said: “With industry moving towards larger wind turbines, we have an opportunity to significantly contribute to reducing the cost of turbine technology. It is essential to maximise this opportunity in a number of key areas including the challenge of improving powertrain component reliability and availability.

“By developing the next generation of powertrain components, and improving their lifespan, we can significantly reduce the related operations and maintenance costs and subsequently minimise the number of human interventions for potentially dangerous turbine repair work at sea.”