We started working with Vind AI in late 2022, when we joined Vind AI’s expert panel of offshore wind developers.
“We joined the expert panel because we saw exciting potential in Vind AI’s tool. We see technology as an important enabler to help us create the best possible projects as efficiently as possible. As a Norwegian developer we also want to support the growth of a strong supplier industry for offshore wind in Norway, including start-ups like Vind. Collaborating closely with Vind to advance their offshore wind tool was a win-win situation for us,” says Bjørn Johansen, Engineering Manager in Vårgrønn.
"Vårgrønn is one of our most forward leaning and innovative industry partners. Being an early adopter of Vind AI, their competence and feedback to Vind AI have been immensely important for pushing our technology forward." - Helene Bøhler, CEO in Vind AI.
“Vind AI offers an industry-leading platform for offshore wind project planning and design,” says Fredrik Kuhn, Project Manager in our Project Development team. “For us, the optimisation features that support efficient and rapidly iterative design processes are most useful. It enables us to speed up our design processes significantly.”
Vind AI combines park design, electrical system layout design and constraint analysis. The software also contains a large collection of various data layers. The relevant layers are automatically made available in response to the geographical location of each project. The tool also allows users to import additional data layers if they want to.
Combining all of this in a single tool makes the initial design process much more efficient for our team. Better decisions are reached, and the team arrives at those decisions more quickly.
“Those of us working on different aspects of the project have access to the same information at the same time,” says Fredrik Kuhn. “This simplifies interaction between various development and maturation processes in the project."
"Vind AI allows parallel maturation of both technical parameters and aspects related to co-existence and sustainability and helps us assemble the key data layers for each individual project.” - Fredrik Kuhn, Project Manager
For example, challenging locations are easily screened out with the tools for assessing water depth and adding various data layers.
The optimisation functionalities in Vind AI’s tool greatly improve the early-stage decision making with respect to initial park placement and layout. Our team can directly compare various park alternatives using the built-in comparison module. Preferred cases can be saved separately and further improved as part of the project maturation process.
“The park and array cable layout optimisation features provide a great starting point for the initial energy production estimates and electrical system modelling," says Charlotte Elmelid, Leading Electrical Systems Engineer
Vind AI allows simple collaboration between team members both inside Vårgrønn and with project partners. The software offers functionality for questions and comments directly in the user interface. Individual users can also develop alternatives to the existing case for comparison and analysis of changes to the project concept.
The software allows the individual user to get access to specific projects inside the software and to tailor the required permissions for each individual user on each specific project. This means information can easily be shared both with other team members or with external stakeholders who need to be informed.
With a large collection of data layers readily available in Vind AI, we can easily integrate an extensive range of sustainability factors, like biodiverse areas and fisheries, sufficiently early in the design process that they gain a real influence on the project design.
Designing for sustainability at an earlier stage than in traditional offshore wind development processes supports our ambition of becoming an industry frontrunner on sustainability.
Using the optimisation functionalities in the platform, we experience significant time savings in park design and constraint analysis. For example, generating a layout for an early-stage project could typically take weeks, while with Vind AI layouts can be created, analysed and compared within hours.
Working efficiently with offshore wind projects requires transparency and collaboration between internal disciplines, with external consultants and with project partners. At Vårgrønn, collaboration is a core company value. With Vind AI, we experience increased efficiency in collaboration and radical improvement in the information flow within the project team.
Read the full case study via Vind AI: https://vind.ai/case-vargronn/
