Interreg VB North Sea program: Decom Tools
Within the scope of the Interreg VB North Sea program, the project Decom Tools has been approved in 2018. Lead by the University of Applied sciences of Emden-Leer, a transnational partnership of 13 partners works together on the organisation of the decommissioning of wind farms in the North Sea. Most wind turbines are designed and certified for a service life of 20 to 25 years. After this period, these turbines have to be decommissioned.
While processes for decommissioning/repowering of onshore wind parks are better known, the experience with offshore ones is quite limited. So far only Ytrre Stengrund (Sweden) and Vindeby (Denmark) have been dismantled, plus 2 single near-shore turbines, namely Windfloat 1 (Portugal) and Hooksiel (Germany) and 4 turbines at the Lely farm (Netherlands).
A sustainable approach to the end of lifecycle of offshore wind farms is missing. It is the overall objective of the project to develop eco-innovative concepts that might solve this issue. These concepts have a double objective: reduce the cost of decommissioning offshore wind farms with 20% and the environmental footprint by 25%, and increase the know-how and the expertise of the North Sea Region stakeholders in this sector.
Research will be validated by demonstration pilots in the areas of logistics, safety, ship design and up-/re-cycling. Existing and Innovative technologies will be combined in order to tackle some of the major aspects of the decommissioning challenge, incl. the optimization of existing (port) off/onshore infrastructure. Not only the wind turbines need to be considered, but also the cables, the foundations, the OHVS, etc.
Decom Tools: https://northsearegion.eu/decomtools
EU-Partners: https://northsearegion.eu/decomtools/project-partners
DecomWind.be
Leading partners of DecomWind.be
Port Oostende and REBO nv created the platform DecomWind.be to bring together those partners, who are willing to share knowledge, competences and experiences to handle the decommissioning of end-of-life wind turbines, both onshore and offshore.
Partners of this platform can be industries, sector organizations, research centers or public authorities.
The DecomWind.be platform organizes webinars, workshops, dedicated presentations and seminars to bring all interested parties together.
The focus of the different events is:
- Infrastructure – dedicated sites in Flanders and Wallonia
- Inventory – market & volumes
- Legal framework offshore and onshore
- Actual and future Decom-techniques for the different components with a special focus on the blades
- Logistics@Sea
- Port accessibility
- Logistics@Port
- Decontamination
- Dismantling
- Recycling loop
- End users
- Waste
DecomWind will also participate at different local and international events where decommissioning is a mayor topic.
We will inform our members about our participation at such events during our activities or by newsletters.
