Early this year, the EERA DeepWind took place on January 14 to 16th, 2026, in Trondheim, Norway. The event aims to present the best ongoing research and innovation related to deep sea offshore wind farms, both bottom-fixed and floating.
The conference has been developing every year since 2004, and is established as an important venue on deep sea offshore wind R&D and is organised by SINTEF, NTNU and EERA JP wind.
Koen Hermans, from Ramboll, presented “Evaluating Impact of WTG Control Strategies on the Structural Integrity of Support Structures using FMECA”, on TWAIN results as keynote speaker in the wind farm control track.
He talked about the benefits of conducting a structured risk assessment to enable reliability centered maintenance. This is demonstrated by the Failure Mode, End Effect, and Criticality (FMECA) assessment conducted by the consortium, which systematically evaluates the effects of three distinct control strategies on the structural integrity of the Gravity Based foundations for the Lillgrund offshore wind farm.
A paper on the results is being prepared and will be published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series later this year. The presentation sparked a lively discussion on the potential load impact for de- rating and downregulation strategies. Other speakers in the wind farm control session talked about how different curtailment events influence loads, emphasizing that TWAIN adds valuable insights to current research on this topic.
You can download the presentation here.