It was another great WESA Event on Thursday, 15 March, this time with Vattenfall in the spotlight. About 50 WESA members, from various study lines at DTU, got the opportunity to interact with the team from Vattenfall’s Wind Business Area division and R&D. Michael Simmelsgaard, Head of Offshore Development, spearheaded the evening with an exciting presentation on the future energy need and the case for wind, a sustainable industry. The growth scale of the industry and future opportunities were hot topics and Michael stressed how this is the right time to be graduating in Wind Energy. The subsidy free energy market was a topic that received a lot of questions.
Martina Fischetti, Lead Engineer and Wind farm layout design expert at Vattenfall, delivered a presentation on application of cutting edge Operations Research (OR) techniques for optimization in Wind Energy. Martina, who completed her PHD between Vattenfall and DTU Management, explained how her new software was able to optimize a wind farm layout for maximum AEP considering constraints of space, wake losses and costs of foundations. It was interesting to note that a re-analysis of an offshore wind farm layout plan, testing the new software, showed that +0.57% AEP could be achieved. Martina added that though this number seems trivial, it translates to high earnings in revenue. She also pointed it out that Wind Energy could benefit from applications of OR in numerous areas, increasing thus its competitiveness against other energy sources. Finally, she explained how inter array cable routing was optimized for minimum CAPEX, impressively saving about 1.5 Million EUR, while an additional 1.7 Million EUR could be further saved through the lifetime of the project if cable losses were considered.
The evening summed up the scope, the need and the impact of Wind Energy research. A list of interesting master thesis topics from Vattenfall were shared with WESA members. The event was a proof to WESA and Vattenfall’s focus on collaboration for research in Wind Energy. It was also great to see many DTU Alumni as part of the team from Vattenfall. We know that we are sure to see many WESA members also go onward to similarly exciting careers in Wind Energy.
We would like to thank Vattenfall for bringing a team consisted of professionals with different backgrounds, presenting the various career possibilities and for offering us a very interesting evening.
WESA