A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown that in a traditional wind farm, the different wind turbines affect each other’s efficiency. This means that wind farms can generate more energy if the turbines aren’t configured individually but collectively as wind farms.

Vattenfall has found a way to avoid grid congestion. By allowing windmills and electric cars to communicate with each other about the energy supply and charging requirements, the Swedish energy company wants to ensure that the demand for electric transport does not exceed the capacity of the grid. Vattenfall aims to achieve this with a “smart charging with wind energy” pilot using the new Hollandse Kust West wind farm.

Almost every day, maintenance workers leave for offshore installations to carry out the necessary maintenance work. Components or tools regularly break down, which can lead to some work not being carried out or having to be postponed. This results in a lot of lost time and unnecessary costs.

Vattenfall will produce hydrogen at sea by installing an “electrolyser” on an existing operational turbine in Scotland. The hydrogen will travel via pipeline to the coast at Aberdeen Harbour.

The energy sector is increasingly facing the threat of cyberattacks, and in particular ransomware attacks. Energy is now one of the top three industries reporting this issue. What can the energy sector do to protect itself from cyberattacks? And more specifically, how can offshore wind farms protect themselves?

This spring will see the launch of the Icon project “Validated Architectures using 5G for teleoperation and collaborative operation” or “ValArch5G” for short. Accelleran, e-BO Enterprises, Bekaert, GEOxyz, Flanders Make and imec IDLab are joining forces to this end until mid-2024.