Materials for off shore energy (IA)

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

The next generation of large offshore wind energy generators and tidal power generators will help to reach climate goals and CO2 reduction levels and are likely to secure Europe’s technical and economic competitiveness. Accordingly, new challenges related to materials or multi-material architectures must be addressed, to increase operational performance and allow an appreciable reduction of the overall cost of offshore energy generation, taking into account capital expenditure as well as, running and maintenance costs.

The challenge is therefore to improve the operational performance of the next generation of offshore wind energy generators (larger than 8MW) and tidal stream power generators through better performance of their functional (e.g. wind energy generator rotor blades) and/or structural components (e.g. floating or bottom fixed base structure).

• Develop new and/or improved material solutions or improvements by a combination of materials, technologies and design of structural and functional components. This should result in one or more of the following properties:
  • Increased durability and reliability and reduced maintenance requirements (e.g. self-cleaning and/or self-healing properties, increased corrosion and/or erosion resistance, increased fatigue resistance);
  • Smart material functionality and/or the possibility to use embedded sensors for online monitoring of performance and/or structural health monitoring (detection of environmental impact and/or structural and mechanical status);
  • Lightweight (mainly applicable to wind energy);
  • Increased recyclability with respect to current state-of-the-art;
  • Materials should be easy to repair.
• Consider advanced manufacturing technologies for the reduction of manufacturing costs applicable to already developed materials and take into account costs of (multi)-materials production as well as the design and manufacturability of the new system or product as a whole. Synergies with projects selected under topic DT-FOF-10-2020 Pilot lines for large-part high-precision manufacturing is encouraged.
• Develop and validate suitable models of predictive materials degradation (mechanical and/or environmental), including Life Cycle Assessment and an economic analysis to demonstrate the viability of the solutions.
• The materials solutions should profit from existing European advantages in the value chain, such as existing production of high-level materials and/or production technologies;
• Consider European standardisation and regulation.

Possible materials for wind generators include for example, polymer based fibre reinforced (glass, carbon aramid, etc.) composites, nanoparticle filled composites, materials with embedded superhard nanoparticles, metal-plastic systems, high strength steels, high strength lightweight alloys, (e.g titanium, aluminium etc.) with improved efficiency and cost.

Materials for the development of gearboxes and related parts of the powertrain are excluded from the scope of this topic, as well as Materials for wave energy generators.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the Introduction to the LEIT part of this Work Programme.

Activities should start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 at the end of the project.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 5 and 7 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. This does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Significant reduction of life cycle costs while maintaining or improving other performance properties of the solution (e.g. obtained by significant reduction of maintenance cost);
• Development of materials with optimised materials cost and improved durability, reaching cost reductions for off shore energy production of about 40% of the current value (levelised cost of energy), with cost values;
• produced by wind energy system of clearly below 10 ct€/ kWh or
• produced by tidal stream generator system of 15 ct€/kWh;
• Reduction of environmental impact by 35% (based on life cycle assessment and eco design).

The performance levels and respective impact of the proposed solution(s) should be in line with those specified in the relevant parts of the SET plan (link to be integrated)

Relevant indicators and metrics, with baseline values, should be clearly stated in the proposal.

Clean Energy
Blue Growth