Q: Please briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience with regards to wind turbines
Rosie King (RK): I’m an engineer working in the mechanical and composites team at EDF Renewables UK & Ireland. For the first 2 years I have worked predominantly on providing technical governance, oversight, and support to our asset operations team. However, I am now undertaking a role as mechanical performance engineer in the offshore portfolio management team.
Chris Royle (CR): I am the Senior Technical Project Manager with bp’s Offshore Wind organisation. I work on bp’s UK offshore wind projects, which are an integrated joint venture with partners EnBW to develop 5.9GW (equivalent to powering around 6m UK households). This is part of bp’s growth in this sector and is helping to achieve the UK's ambition of generating 50GW of power from offshore wind by 2030. I have nearly 15 years’ experience in the energy industry, predominantly in O&G with a recent transition to wind projects, it’s been fascinating to apply my project management and engineering skills – specifically my mechanical engineering and rotating equipment experience to a different challenge of wind energy generation.
Peter Childs (PC): I am the chair at BladeBUG Ltd, with over 30 years’ experience in two distinct technologies: robotics and turbines.
Q: What, in your experience, has been the biggest roadblock for utilising technology in your sector?
RK: I believe that historically our industry has been poor at sharing lessons learnt, particularly in the area of engineering. This has been a barrier to implementing new technologies as it has meant that the risk associated with using new technology cannot be reduced through data shared across the industry or the technology itself is not properly understood by those responsible for using it. In addition, the lack of data sharing means that effectiveness of new technology cannot be measured as accurately.
CR: The sector is growing at incredible pace and needs to, but this has to be in a sustainable and financially viable way if we are to see the energy transition that the world needs. At the heart of this is the wind turbine, but there are some big hurdles ahead of us as both Developers, OEMs and the broader supply chain. The world wants growth on a massive scale, we demand bigger and better that puts huge demands on the technology and the supply chain. Costs are increasing and competition is getting hotter. We face a pivotal point in this journey where we need to think differently if we are to achieve our goals sustainably. We need to unlock innovation around technology, materials, digitalisation, manufacture, sustainability and harness cross-industry collaboration if we are to succeed on the targets that are being laid out by governments and the private sector.
PC: People are excited about using robots to aid wind turbine inspection and repairs and just coping with the day-to-day demands of new technology keeps us busy.
Q: What key topics are you excited to speak about at Wind Turbine User Group 2023?
RK: Collaboration in our industry – from understanding how turbine technology works to how we can make use of innovation. I am also particularly interested in how circular economy concepts can be driven forward in our industry.
CR: Unlocking innovation and talent to accelerate wind the global energy transition.
PC: Robots, robots, robots.
Q: Regarding the utilisation of technology, what would you say are the technologies or applications to watch for the future?
RK: Innovation in asset management monitoring techniques and software that will allow monitoring solutions to be integrated into maintenance and inspection regimes – currently this is still quite manual and there is a lot of room for improvement in modelling component degradation which could be fed into robust asset management strategies.
CR: Floating wind turbines, recyclable blades and when will the turbine revolution from the conventional design we have today actually happen?
PC: Collaborative robots, evermore intelligent systems.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme, and why?
RK: I’m particularly interested in hearing from Peter Childs as I believe his presentation on robotic techniques will answer a lot of questions raised in my own presentation about issues we face as an operator.
CR: Ruth Augarde, Senior Engineer, Frazer-Nash Consultancy on Optimising the Next Generation of Wind Turbines.
PC: Enablers for sustainable renewable energy at scale.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this conference?
RK: Forming a strong network is crucial in our industry as technology is advancing so quickly – I think we have an opportunity to share our knowledge to ensure that we make the transition to net-zero as effective as possible and without neglecting our responsibilities as engineers in protecting people and planet whilst working in such a fast-moving environment.
CR: Collaboration and understanding different perspectives to the challenges that we all face. We need to support, encourage, and advocate for a diverse and inclusive representation both in sessions like these; in the Institute and in the industry if we are truly to be successful.
PC: Technology constantly advances and its crucial to engage in the latest developments as well as ensuring a foundation in what we already know.
Wind Turbine User Group 2023 will be taking place on 17-18 May at One Birdcage Walk, London. To view the two-day programme and book your place, please visit the event website.