Modelling engine to design, assess environmental impacts, and operate wind farms for ice-covered waters

The European Union aims to increase energy production by offshore wind farms (OWFs) from present 12 GW to 300 GW by year 2050. Many northern sea areas, such as the Bothnian Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, have been identified as suitable for offshore wind farms. Key challenge related to the OWF developments in all northern sea areas is the interaction OWFs and moving sea ice: It is difficult to design cost-effective yet safe wind turbine units due to high sea ice loads. This halts OWF construction in ice covered seas. WindySea proposes to build a framework for a "Digital Twin of a cold regions OWF", a multi-physics modeling engine for forecasting future marine environmental and ice conditions, while simultaneously being detailed enough for the design and optimization of cold regions OWFs. Aim is to accelerate green transition by optimizing OWFs and wind turbine structures through research on the effects cold marine environment to OWFs and OWFs impact to cold marine environment.