The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and GE Vernova’s Offshore Wind business have announced the signing of a new research collaboration, building on the success of their previous ‘Stay Ashore’ programme.

The £4m agreement announced today (7 August) paves the way for a multi-year collaboration between GE Vernova and ORE Catapult to create a dedicated research programme to help drive down the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) for the global offshore wind market with reliable, enhanced, sustainable, and demonstrated technologies. The partnership will focus on enhancing turbine performance and improved operations and maintenance through smart technological solutions.

The previous programme, Stay Ashore, successfully brought GE and ORE Catapult teams together, and has provided UK businesses, from micro-SMEs to large companies, with the opportunity to collaborate and develop products and services aimed at extending the life of offshore wind components.

Stay Ashore delivered solutions for wind turbine digital twins and used data analytics to inform turbine operations and maintenance. The real-time data from over 70 operational wind turbines, together with virtual physics-based models for the turbine, were used to generate a cloud based digital twin covering models for a multitude of wind turbine components and systems.

From robotic crawlers and new drone and sensor technologies, to cutting edge digital analysis tools, the Stay Ashore programme supported UK SMEs in the development of further new products and services which have subsequently leveraged nearly £2m in funding and/or investment.

Moving forward, this new agreement will focus on some of the biggest challenges facing the industry in the future large-scale deployment of offshore wind and use applied research to enable the development of key innovations.

Andrew Jamieson, Chief Executive of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, said: “This new collaboration is a hugely exciting development for the sector and will allow us to build on the fantastic work we have already seen come through the previous research programme carried out with our colleagues at GE Vernova.

“By combining knowledge and research capabilities in this way, we can help innovative UK companies to develop some of the cutting-edge technological solutions that can help them support the continued growth of the UK offshore wind sector, while also opening up opportunities to export their skills and services to new global markets.”

Vincent Schellings, Chief Technology Officer of GE Vernova’s Offshore Wind business, said: “We are pleased to be able to build on our collaboration with ORE Catapult.  They are an important partner in helping us to understand how we can use innovation to continue to make offshore wind as efficient, reliable, and sustainable as possible, both in the UK and globally.”