Opportunity for innovators in offshore wind: Elia/50 Hertz
08 February 2021
DIT Belgium have been working with the Elia group for a number of years to raise the profile of UK suppliers and innovators.
The Elia group consists of the electricity transmission grid operator in Belgium as well as 50Hertz in Germany.
Each year the innovation team at Elia runs an innovation challenge – each edition focuses on different technologies or subsectors.
This allows start-up’s and spin-out’s to pitch their innovative solution and - if successful - to further develop their proof-of-concept with the Elia group.
The UK participants have been successful with a first place in 2018 and public choice winner in 2020.
This year the focus will be on the offshore transmission grid and in particular on:
1) Solutions to protect and foster ecosystems while reducing the environmental footprint in the construction and operation of the offshore grid.
2) Remote operation and maintenance (IoT, robotics, AI, VR and AR – solutions to increase efficiency and quality of fault detection and maintenance and decrease the need for physical access to enhance the safety of operations and provide greater flexibility)
3) Grid Integration: Solutions that tackle technical challenges such as integrating offshore cables to the grid, improve forecasting and facilitate sector coupling.
4) Out of the box solutions: e.g. co-benefits such as grid extensions for offshore data centers, production of energy (tidal power), fishing purposes, telecom, and scientific purposes.
The first step - filling out the application form and uploading a brief presentation of your solution - needs to be completed before 11 March.
Further details about the challenge can be found on: https://innovation.eliagroup.eu/challenges/oic-2021/
