The ICONIC project is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions, the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee scheme, and Innossuisse.
The consortium brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts from seven academic institutions and seven companies across seven Europe countries. The team gathers a comprehensive range of expertise encompassing component, turbine, farm, and grid integration levels, as well as specialized knowledge in modeling, control, AI, aerodynamics, digital twin, and wind power.
Our goal is to create new digital and physical tools to achieve groundbreaking, integrated control of wind farms. This initiative focuses on understanding and optimizing the entire physical system, from the overall farm to individual turbines and components, emphasizing the aerodynamic interactions between turbines. The proposed solutions will be demonstrated by an extensive validation study via high-fidelity simulation models, experiments at a national-level wind tunnel, historical operational data, and real-world wind farm field tests.
Through these efforts, ICONIC aims to establish and pioneer new realms of knowledge and industrial leadership in key digital, enabling, and emerging technologies. ICONIC aims to directly contribute to Europe's Key Strategic Orientations C and A, paving the way for intelligent integrated wind farm control and delivering next-generation technologies for the wind energy sector.
The consortium’s research objectives are:
Develop new wind farm control tools to improve wind farm operations leveraging AI innovations.
Investigate turbine control solutions with load-reduction abilities to deliver farm-wide objectives.
Develop digital twins and physical tools for awareness and control enhancement considering remaining useful life assessment of wind turbine key components.
Validate and exploit the integrated control system and digital twins via wind tunnel tests, historical operational data, dedicated test rigs, and field tests, and bring ICONIC’s key innovations to TRL 5.
The strategic framework of ICONIC is structured into six work packages (WPs), each with a specific focus:
WP1’s overall objective is to set up and execute an effective project management structure. The corresponding operational objectives are (1) to set up unambiguous and mutually agreed operating procedures and a quality control scheme for project results and deliverables; (2) to facilitate efficient information exchange (within the consortium and towards the EC) and manage the project according to the contract with the EC and (3) to continuously monitor risks, potential IPR issues & data management and intervene when deemed appropriate.
WP2 will develop the farm-level control system, delivering a DRL-based wind farm control architecture to improve farm-wide operating efficiency while considering fatigue/loading issues. It will be a decision maker and control reference generator for turbine-level control system. Methods to enhance scalability and cybersecurity will also be developed.
WP3 aims to realise accurate turbine-level tracking control with respect to the reference commands of yaw angles and power set points from the farm-level control system in WP2. It also targets to achieve load reduction and constraint handling; while also considering specific requirements of 20MW turbines.
WP4 will develop the first WF DT replicating physical wind farm flows and turbines’ critical component DTs including the drivetrain, pitch & yaw systems and the generator. They will be combined to form an integrated DT system, providing to the controllers rich physical information which is the key to find the right commitment between energy production and lifetime of the farm, turbine and their subsystems to optimise LCOE.
WP5 will comprehensively test and validate the controls and digital tools proposed in this project via historical data and dedicated experiments with test rigs, the wind tunnel experiments at the UK’s National Wind Tunnel facilities at ICL, and field tests at CPW’s wind farm.
WP6 aims to ensure an effective transfer of the ICONIC outcomes and knowledge to the full range of stakeholders. To this purpose, the activities specifically aim at (1) engagement of relevant stakeholder feedback across the complete value chain; (2-3) appropriate dissemination and exploitation of project assets; and (4) utilising appropriate outreach channels to address the different target groups.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
