ECN part of TNO is looking for one (or more) of your talented students who are interested in maintenance of offshore wind farms. ECN part of TNO has developed simulation and optimisationsoftware for maintenance planning on offshore wind farms. These are state of the art and are beingapplied on wind farms in Europe and Asia.
Further development is required on several topics, meaning that the student has flexibility to definethe most interesting line of research for them:
- Understanding and modelling more complex maintenance operations offshore (more details available on request);
- Using machine learning techniques to improve the efficiency of the maintenance planning optimiser “ECN Despatch”;
- Using reinforcement learning techniques to improve the performance of “ ECN Despatch”;
- Implementing more advanced vessel pathing algorithms (such as timedependent A*).
Depending on the topic chosen, the student can implement their ideas (or see their ideasimplemented) into live systems and deployed to offshore wind farm sites. They can also designfeedback mechanisms into the software, if desired.
The student will also have the opportunity to travel to a wind farm to talk to technicians and siteoperations staff to understand the topic in more depth.
The student will be working closely with the supervisor, an experienced data scientist, on thedevelopments. The supervisor will also be working on related developments, some of which are vitalto ongoing development projects with clients.
However, it should be noted that the focus of this placement is research, so improvement in knowledge (even if a branch of investigation is a failure!) is the desired outcome.
At the end of their time at ECN part of TNO, the student will be expected to have provided:
- A report;
- A presentation to the department;
- Any code, suitably commented.
This placement would suit a mathematically‐minded student, with strong programming skills, andpreferably someone with some experience of software development in a company environment,ideally in C#.
The student will need to be comfortable structuring research and working independently on solving a problem, while asking for support and guidance as required.
ECN part of TNO offers approximately €400/month expenses (to be confirmed). Most students live inAlkmaar and commute to work, to take advantage of the strong community of young researchersworking at ECN part of TNO.
If you are interested in the assignment, please contact Engin Topan via email e.topan@utwente.nl