4 Companies – 2 Rooms – 1 event
Four companies answered the call of WESA and came to DTU on 12.04.2018, to meet with the students and present their field of operations.
More than 60 students had the opportunity to talk with successful professionals and learn about many different fields of the wind energy industry. It was the first time for the companies to participate in an event where they could meet in person the future engineers and present their ideas.
The main part of the event took place in the Conference area, where students visited the stands of each company, talked with the company representatives in a personal and productive way.
Besides the Conference area, each company had their chance to be in the spotlight and make a detailed presentation regarding their activities and inspire the students, revealing all the different paths that an engineer could follow.
Ole Bigum Nielsen, COO, opened the presentation of K2 Management and spoke about the exciting development of new markets in the wind energy industry and the zero subsidy conditions brought about in the mature European market. In addition, he shared that K2, being a global wind energy consulting company with +200 employees in 16 offices in 6 countries, has plans to double employee growth so as to enable local support to clients.
Tue Lippert delivered an inspiring speech on life lessons he learned from conversations with his father and during his time as a sailor with the Danish Navy. He shared 4 key points: Manoeuver, Navigate, Communicate and Administrate, which find application in life, in sea-faring, as well as in project management. “Life is too short for poor management” said Tue.
The Blaest Test Centre was born out of a partnership between DTU, Force Technology and DNV-GL. Blaest CEO, Erik Steen Jensen, gave a detailed presentation on the various kinds of tests done on large wind turbine blades at Blaest’s Test Centre in Aalborg. Students were appreciative of the challenging task of “testing one blade such as to ensure that the whole population of the same blade type fulfills the standard.”
Erik spoke about the various methods and tests carried out. Explaining why a static test is done after the fatigue test, he said “The blade should still be able to withstand the 100 year storm even on the last day of operation, before decommissioning.”
He stressed on the company’s flexibility to meet client needs as well as test specific equipment design and he explained the future changes in testing standards that indicate that this area, will see more growth in the future.
He shared the challenges of testing even larger wind turbine blades, speaking from Blaest’s experience of performing test services for the largest wind turbine blade, LM Windpower’s LM88.4P blade. He welcome DTU students to think of innovative solutions to the challenges shared.
Finally, Erik also presented some insights into working in the wind energy industry in Denmark, speaking from a career in Wind Energy spanning over 25 years of experience, working at Vestas, Clipper Windpower, Danish Wind Design, Mecal, Danish Energy Agency, Dong Energy, and starting Blaest.
Sebastian Kaus made a demonstration of Greenbyte’s wind power asset management software, Breeze, explaining the need and utility of such systems for management of diverse and large portfolios of power plants.
Having a background in Data Science and Performance Monitoring, he gave a closer look into Breeze’s application of data science techniques such as artificial neural networks along with wind energy domain knowledge.
AtSite CEO and MD, Mads Obling Rasmussen, shared AtSite’s story of being a leader in the rapidly evolving blade inspection industry. He spoke of inspections using Drones, Ground UltraHD Cameras, Rope-access and even advanced lightweight crawler robots for inspection of blade internals and how over 1000 offshore and onshore inspections were done by AtSite’s technicians last year.
It was especially interesting to hear the latest improvements and ideas AtSite is working on since their JV with Aerodyne, which is a Malaysian software and drone specialist. Mads spoke about live defect detection using drones for quicker inspection and reporting.
He shared that the near future might see ‘nested’ long range and long endurance drones that would be placed offshore or could be sent offshore from quayside such that every offshore windfarm could have its own drone on call for faster and better timed inspections. He explained how AtSite is also working on relating blade defects with the power curve, benchmarking and using weather data to better plan and priorities inspection campaigns.
He was also very eager to answer numerous questions of the students about offshore inspections and Mads talked about many practical challenges faced such as wind speeds and wave height, rules and regulations, costs and availability of technicians and vessels, etc.
A promising future
At the end of the day, all the participants, companies and students, showed great enthusiasm about the first conference day organized by WESA. They were eager to continue their collaboration with WESA and participate in similar events in the future, as the WESA Conference Day created the perfect environment for networking and fruitful discussions between the industry and the students of DTU.
We would like to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for making this event a success and provide us with the inspiration to continue pushing forward, as one of the important milestones of the Wind Energy Student Association has been achieved.
WESA