Following the recently launched CETPartnership project FLEXI and the newly funded CETPartnership project twinRE, TwinD is the third active European collaboration project coordinated by Assoc. Prof. Sashko Ristov. His research activities in model-driven, AI-supported and cloud-native digital twins for the transition to clean energy are thus further strengthened.
Over the next 42 months, the international consortium will develop digital twin technologies to improve the reliability, availability and maintainability of wind energy systems. TwinD combines low-code digital twin engineering, multimodal reliability prediction, real-time condition and health monitoring, technician-oriented 3D/XR support, risk-aware maintenance planning and cloud-native deployment automation.
A key strength of TwinD is its robust industrial validation across the entire wind energy value chain. The technologies developed are validated in real-world and relevant wind power operational contexts, including wind farm operations, aggregator-based system constraints, transmission system operations, and wind farm operations and maintenance services. This enables TwinD not only to address technical forecasting and monitoring, but also the practical planning, grid, market and maintenance constraints that determine how wind farms are operated in practice.
The project brings together nine partners from six countries and pools expertise from universities, SMEs, technology providers, wind farm operators, aggregators and transmission system operators. The consortium includes the University of Innsbruck as coordinator, Aalborg University (Denmark), CheckWatt (Sweden), Styr och Mätteknik Sverige AB (Sweden), Zorlu Enerji (Turkey), MEPSO (North Macedonia), ThingLink (Finland), ModelarData (Denmark) and LieberLieber (Austria). The project is further supported by industrial and systems-related expertise from advisory partners such as Bachmann electronic (Austria) and MEMO (North Macedonia).
TwinD builds on previous and ongoing projects such as MATISSE and FLEXI and further establishes the University of Innsbruck as a key European research centre for digital twins, artificial intelligence and cloud technologies that support reliable, sustainable and competitive renewable energy systems.
New Horizon Europe projekt: TwinD - coordinated by Ass. Prof. Sashko Ristov
Assistant Professor Sashko Ristov has secured funding for TwinD – Model-Driven Digital Twins for Reliable and Autonomous Wind Operation and Maintenance, a new research and innovation project under Horizon Europe, which was selected as part of the call for proposals aimed at improving the reliability and optimising the operation and maintenance of wind energy systems. The project has a total budget of almost 4 million euros, of which approximately 883,000 euros have been allocated to the University of Innsbruck. The proposal received the maximum score of 15/15 and was selected in a highly competitive call for proposals with 75 submissions.