Senvion Blades

On the German side of the North and Baltic see offshore wind parks with a total installed capacity of more than 5.000 megawatt are already permitted. A large part of the planned farms is based on the 5 megawatt turbine Senvion 5M. Senvion will deliver six wind turbines for the first offshore wind farm in Germany’s North Sea territories. Higher electricity yields from wind energy and significantly lower costs for electricity generation over the lifetime of a wind turbine make projects at sea more attractive and bring forward the offshore wind energy as a whole. The planned technical innovations of the turbine component rotor blade aim to contribute to this.

The project deals with the development of an innovative, yield-optimized and cost-efficient rotor blade for offshore wind turbines. It is designed to improve the Senvion 5M wind turbine with its installed capacity of 5 megawatt with respect to costs, durability and convenient maintenance. Based on expertise gathered from prototype turbines the further development shall respect the specific challenges of offshore sites. Even though the experiences made are overall positive there is a need for a targeted technological development of the rotor blade towards the necessary operating efficiency. With the expertise and support from research institutions and companies the project will analyse technical innovations in aerodynamics, structural form, manufacturing technology and structure monitoring. The implementation of the advancements shall as far as possible be implemented in the offshore test site “alpha ventus”.

The project has two major themes, (1) the improvement of aerodynamics and (2) cost reduction. Through the interconnection between the R&D activities executed by industry and science a broad practice-oriented scientific progress is made in the explored areas.