AIRTO member The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult is leading a groundbreaking research and development team to transform the design and manufacture of steel onshore wind turbine towers – making them more efficient and sustainable.
The consortium, largely based in Wales, includes Tata Steel UK, RWE, Bute Energy, Hutchinson Engineering, and Ledwood, and the project has won £174,000 SMART Flexible Innovation Support from the Welsh Government.
Most wind turbine towers currently built in the UK rely on imported thick steel plate for construction, creating a potential bottleneck for renewable energy projects. This initiative could change this, by developing a tower design that uses thin strip, coil based, low emission steel, produced in electric arc furnaces – enabling lighter, more efficient structures that could significantly cut costs.
Image Credit: Tata Steel UK
