On April 28, 2016, IRPWind held its 2nd General Assembly. The meeting took place at the UN City in Copenhagen a scenic venue located at the Copenhagen waterfront with a clear view to the Middelgrund windfarm which is one of the first community owned off-shore wind farm.
The General Assembly was opened by WindEurope’s Chief Policy Officer, Kristian Ruby who gave a talk on the newly established European Technology and Innovation Platform for wind energy (ETIPWind).
The alignment of national and EU-project is an important motivation for IRPWind and something that still requires further work. At the General Assembly a set of parallel workshops had therefore been included. The intention with the parallel sessions was to identify national projects with research topics related to the three IRPWind core scientific work packages and which could benefit from being closer linked through the IRPWind mobility or infrastructure programmes. 28 national projects were identified, which can be relevant to IRPWIND Work Packages WP 6, 7 and 8 henceforward.
One issue that also came up as especially relevant for the offshore Work Package is the access to data. This is a real obstacle for further alignment and researchers are hesitant to use the IRPWIND CSA schemes for such reasons. It was therefore proposed to investigate how this specific challenge could be addressed in the next call for IRPWInd infrastructure projects.
The General Assembly also dedicated specific sessions to mobility and infrastructure related issues. At the end of year 2, the mobility programme reached a total of 21 approved applications for mobility. This was less than expected and it was therefore agreed with the European Commission to increase flexibility of the mobility scheme while IRPWind will also strengthen the advertisement of the scheme. The increased flexibility will, for example, allow senior managers to join other departments for shorter visits.
The first internal call for joint experiments using IRPWIND partners’ research infrastructures has been published. We have received 7 applications and 3 joint experiments will be granted. Grant letters highlighting special requirements, including the requirements for open access will be announced during June 2016.