Knowledge-Transfer Webinar: Engineering and technology innovation

Women in Wind held its first Knowledge-Transfer Webinar yesterday, on the topic of engineering and technological innovation. We were delighted to welcome Lucy Craig, Vice President and Director, Technology & Innovation, DNV, Angela Lock, General Manager, APAC, Tekmar Group (pictured below, center), and Catalina Sarivan, Product Manager, MHI Vestas (pictured above), to share their insights with our program Participants in a closed-door webinar.

Some of the insights include:

• Lucy discussed the difference between the oft-used terms digitization (making processes digital, from wind farm and turbine design to monitoring and analysis), digitalization (business opportunities created by digitization, such as procuring customers through web portals) and digital transformation (changing business models through digitalization, such as online subscription services).
• Angela provided an overview of the offshore wind growth story in the Asia-Pacific region, specifically Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China. The latter market will grow rapidly in the next 10 years, with pressure of a decreasing FIT scheme spurring a rapid construction period.
• She also spoke about protection systems for sub-sea cables, a high-risk area for project capex as cable damage comprises around 80% of insurance claims in the sector.
• Catalina closed off the presentations by demonstrating the evolution of turbines and other components from the mid-1990s to present-day. She also highlighted that her company’s largest rotor model was configured for worldwide application, demonstrating the deployment of offshore wind in emerging markets with extreme weather conditions.

Webinar participants asked thoughtful questions, such as how to use digital solutions to optimise older systems in markets where there was generally less data available. The question, “Will the turbines ever stop getting bigger?” sparked lively responses. And finally, each speaker shared her advice on becoming a thought leader in her respective field, noting the importance of focusing on a pathway (specialist? generalist?) and following your passion.