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Annual Report 2015
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NOWITECH
Norwegian Research Centre for Offshore Wind Technology
2015 HIGHLIGHTS
John Olav Giæver Tande,
Director NOWITECH
NOWITECH continues to deliver new knowledge and innovations that will reduce the
cost of energy from future offshore wind farms and increase value creation in terms of
new jobs, products and services. The industry participation has increased with Norsk
Automatisering AS (NAAS) joining in 2015 to further develop their remote presence
concept for unmanned inspection of offshore wind farms. The remote presence idea
came from NAAS, and has been matured through a PhD study carried out in NOWITECH
and through a portfolio of other projects, including the EU FP7 project LeanWind and a
BIA project co-funded by the Research Council of Norway. They have now established a new company EMIP
AS to commercialise the concept. Once being applied in the market the concept
can radically reduce the need for service personnel to physically access offshore
wind farms, thus reducing the cost of energy from future offshore wind farms.
Another company that has been established applying results from NOWITECH is
Seram Coatings AS. They have a patented process for a thermally sprayed silicon
carbide coating for which a breakthrough came as part of NOWITECH PhD study
by Fahmi Mubarok. The process provides for an extremely hard, wear-resistant, low friction ceramic coating.
In recent media coverage the potential is reported to be a billion business with multiple application areas.
In total NOWITECH has brought forward 40 innovations. These are all illustrated on the next two pages and
further described in the section on research work and results later on this annual report. The innovations
are all reported with a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and shows excellent progress. The total number
of innovations has increased, and the innovations have developed towards higher maturity, see graphic on
page 3.
The educational programme provides for first-rate recruitment opportunities for the industry. A total
of eight PhDs successfully defended their theses at NTNU in 2015, of which seven were fully funded by
NOWITECH and one by other sources, but carried out in alignment with NOWITECH. In addition, 48 master
students graduated from NTNU with theses on offshore wind energy. This is a remarkable increase from
previous years that since 2009 has varied between 18 and 28, and demonstrates high and increasing interest
in offshore wind energy among master students at NTNU.
The scientific work is of high international standard. In 2015 NOWITECH prepared 121 publications
including 39 peer-reviewed papers, 15 conference presentations, 18 reports and 20 media contributions.
The use of web, newsletters and organization of workshops and conferences enhance the communication:
• Two seminars were held in the series “Industry meets Science” in cooperation with WindCluster Norway.
These facilitate improved interaction between research and industry, also for parties outside NOWITECH
and as a Norwegian shadow-group towards the European strategic research agenda on offshore wind.
• A main event for communicating open results from NOWITECH is the EERA DeepWind conference held
every year in Trondheim. The EERA DeepWind’2015 Deep Sea Offshore Wind R&D Conference, February
4-6, was a success with 65 oral and 50 poster presentations and fully booked with 200 delegates from all
over Europe, and from USA and Japan.
Participation in relevant national and international forums is emphasised. Amongst others in 2015
NOWITECH was presented during the Energy Science Week in Tokyo, Japan coordinated by the Research
Council of Norway. This has resulted in new cooperative projects with Japan on offshore wind energy.
The accumulated costs for NOWITECH in 2015 were NOK 40 million co-funded by the Research Council of
Norway (RCN), the industry parties and the research parties.
In recent media coverage the
potential is reported to be a
billion business with multiple
application areas.