Offshoreenergy.dk and ten partners have secured about EUR 5.6 million in subsidies to give sub-contractors in the North Sea offshore wind industry easier access to testing and a framework for new cooperative relationships within the European offshore cluster.
Suppliers to the offshore wind industry can now apply to join the Inn2Power project which is funded by a grant from the European Development Fund, Interreg, and Region of Southern Denmark, Offshoreenergy.dk said.
The funds will be provided over a four-year project period to finance better testing facilities, boost cooperation and disseminate applied research to small and medium-sized companies across the the North Sea region.
The project will be anchored at Offshoreenergy.dk and Business Academy Southwest. Before the project application, 18 Danish SMEs announced that they would apply to join if the project went ahead.
“Inn2Power will give SMEs easier access to testing, This could be a crucial opportunity to substantiate how new technical breakthroughs or products will work in practise,” said Hans A. Pedersen, Director Renewables, Offshoreenergy.dk.
“We have excellent Danish test facilities, whose logistics and infrastructure are tailor-made for the purpose. However, testing remains hugely expensive for SMEs.”
Another aspect of Inn2Power that is important for Danish SMEs is the element that seeks to build relationships across the North Sea.
“Different areas of the North Sea region have different positions of strength,” said Glenda Napier, CEO of Offshoreenergy.dk.
“They can complement each other if they work together. If members of different clusters can work together, the benefits could well include the development of more systemic solutions of the type that the industry is calling for to supplement the existing component solutions.”
The project is also expected to boost the role of SMEs in research. A new MBA qualification will include modules specifically developed for offshore wind.
“The project will apply research methods that make relationships comparable. Using these methods, we can more reliably identify the cooperative relationships which will be most beneficial,” said Lisbeth Brøde Jepsen, PhD and Innovation Developer at Business Academy Southwest.
The project has 11 partners in Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK, some of whom can now expand on cooperation established between them during the ECOWindS project that ran from 2012-2015.