LIGHTWIND: A DISRUPTIVE DRIVE-TRAIN FOR ULTRALIGHT AND LOWER COST WIND TURBINES

The current drive-train solutions for bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines do not necessarily work well for floating wind turbines, especially when it comes to increasing the size of the turbines beyond the current state of the art.

The increasing nacelle weight makes it difficult to develop floating platforms that are both technically and economically viable beyond 15 MW.

Also, high repair costs of current drive-train solutions are making sites far off coast (which would be technically viable for floating wind turbines) economically unacceptable.

Innovation is needed to develop new solutions for floating wind turbines that can reduce the weight of nacelle and rotor and subsequently also of the supporting structures, while maintaining or increasing energy production and decreasing repair costs.This project proposes to develop a disruptive, compact and lightweight drive-train solution, that offers significant advantages in terms of mass, turbine and repair costs, scalability, critical materials usage, and social and environmental impacts.The LIGHTWIND project aims at demonstrating the technical feasibility of the concept and at evaluating the economic, social, and environmental benefits by comparing it to existing 15 MW turbine reference models.

Additionally, the project will demonstrate that these benefits allow the scaling of floating offshore wind turbines to 22 and 30 MW.