Decommissioning wind turbine blades (WTB) effectively is a crucial stage to enable recycling of the materials and thus circularity. TNO is anticipating this future with the specially designed UWiSE Decommission module to help offshore wind farm owners and contractors make intelligent, well-founded and accurate decommissioning decisions, well before the wind turbines or floating solar farms need removing. Being also part of the project consortium of the EU Horizon EoLO-HUBS project, TNO is now sharing first insights into their recently launched software tool that enables smooth and impactful decommissioning.

Why is such a tool important?
Decommissioning offshore wind turbines can be a technical and logistical nightmare if all the dependencies aren’t in place. Ultimately, you want to know beforehand the most effective strategy for your project and not encounter unforeseen issues along the way. Until now the market around decommissioning wind farms is lacking experience and data. Additionally, most decommissioning projects have a unique character – the dismantling process varies depending on turbine and foundation types, sizes, site characteristics, regulations and ecological decisions.

As a sharp increase in offshore decommissioning activities is expected after 2030, a tool is needed that can evaluate different scenarios and thus support the decision-making process to save costs for all stakeholders in the ecosystem.

For who is the tool relevant?
TNO is a non-profit organisation, seeking to support various stakeholders of the wind industry and offshore wind sector in developing and implementing impactful innovation. While wind farm owners and contractors may benefit from using the TNO software in their commercial activities, the tool is a great asset for researchers (from both knowledge institutes and academia) working on innovative solutions to reduce the cost, risk, and environmental impact profile of offshore decommissioning campaigns.

The new Decommission module has been built within the UWiSE software platform (Unified Wind Farm Simulation Environment) developed by TNO, formerly ECN, based on 20 years of modelling experience. The UWiSE platform consists of four modules. Besides the just launched UWiSE Decommission, the platform contains a module for offshore installation campaigns (UWiSE Install), one for long-term O&M strategies (UWiSE O&M Planner), and another for the daily dispatching of maintenance activities (UWiSE Despatch).

Evaluating innovations through looking into the specific scenarios, these tools are a great help as well for start-ups and enable holistic collaboration which is key for circularity and sustainable transition.

How to use the tool?
The UWiSE Decommission module covers the bases by enabling wind farm owners and contractors to quantitatively evaluate the impact of offshore operational details, vessel choice, weather delays, resource variations and work sequence. Based on the information entered, the tool produces accurate estimates of decommissioning campaign costs and durations that include uncertainty due to weather and activity duration variability.

Furthermore, the module gives a detailed breakdown of resource utilisation for assessing the emission footprint of the operations. The tool also allows for sensitivity analyses in order to fully understand the impact of using certain resources and processes, and thus take improvement measures that benefit project efficiency, speed, costs, and sustainability goals.

As input for the UWiSE Decommission tool, the user has an Excel input file for detailed project information (fixed costs, farm data,  assets, ports, vessels, staffing, etc.), site-specific weather data for evaluating weather dependencies, and a block-diagram description of method statements in the user interface.

Reach out to TNO for a demo
To learn more about TNO and their UWiSE Decommission tool, you can check out their website or reach out to Simone Mancini (simone.mancini@tno.nl). For more information on the lifecycle of a wind turbine blade, check out the TNO Flow Chart, giving insights into the decommissioning stage as well as the recycling and processing of recycled fibers.