Grand challenges in the digitalisation of wind energy

The availability of large amounts of data is starting to impact how thewind energy community works. From turbine design to plant layout,construction, commissioning, and maintenance and operations, newprocesses and business models are springing up. This is the process ofdigitalisation, and it promises improved efficiency and greater insight,ultimately leading to increased energy capture and significant savingsfor wind plant operators, thus reducing the levelised cost of energy.Digitalisation is also impacting research, where it is both easing andspeeding up collaboration, as well as making research results moreaccessible. This is the basis for innovations that can be taken up byend users. But digitalisation faces barriers. This paper uses aliterature survey and the results from an expert elicitation to identifythree common industry-wide barriers to the digitalisation of windenergy. Comparison with other networked industries and past and ongoinginitiatives to foster digitalisation show that these barriers can onlybe overcome by wide-reaching strategic efforts, and so we see these as"grand challenges" in the digitalisation of wind energy. They are,first, creating FAIR data frameworks; secondly, connecting people and data to foster innovation; and finally, enabling collaboration and competition between organisations. The grand challenges in the digitalisation of wind energy thus include a mix of technical, cultural, and business aspects thatwill need collaboration between businesses, academia, and government tosolve. Working to mitigate them is the beginning of a dynamic processthat will position wind energy as an essential part of a global cleanenergy future.