DNV GL seminar on Component, Type and Project Certification of wind farms premieres in Paris
Earlier this month, DNV GL hosted a three-day customer seminar on wind farm certification in Paris for the first time after the merger. France staged the premiere of this new seminar due to the French Government’s commitment to offshore wind and the recent public commitment to IEC standards. The seminar attracted participants from across the industry including developers, designers, manufacturers and contractors and was fully booked.
DNV GL is the only certification body to offer a seminar on Component, Type and Project Certification of wind farms to the market.
The seminar was delivered by senior and principal engineers working with certification on a daily basis. It’s intended for technical staff, engineers, and project managers responsible for designing or navigating the certification of components, wind turbine types and offshore wind farms. In this first seminar, participants from France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, US and the UK took part.
The seminar provides training on the mandatory and optional tasks of the certification process and is built around DNV GL service specifications, standards and related international standards in IEC 61400. It is designed to increase the participants’ familiarity with the standards and certification process to save time, reduce costs and enable the capturing of added value in the final product. “Typically, a wind farm project involves multiple project partners. Combined with multiple technical disciplines, it is obvious that project management can be challenging. Understanding the verification process, the requirements according to international standards and related DNV GL standards, the timing involved, the critical communication and interaction needed in order for project phases to run efficiently, will enhance the design process and the ability to deliver on time”, said Fabio Pollicino, DNV GL’s Service Line Leader for Project Certification.
Vicente Garcia Munoz, from Siemens Wind Power A/S (SWP), one on the participants of the seminar, said: “I’m responsible for Type Certificate of SWP Offshore products, so the program prepared for the seminar - combining Type Certification and Project Certification - was really beneficial. My challenge was to better understand the Project Certification process and to try to find potential improvements in the Type Certification process. I returned home with some good ideas for continuous improvement in the iterations between Type Certification and Project Certification. Also it’s important to mention that the group of people attending was really interesting because not only manufactures as SWP were there, but also utilities and owners.”
The next seminar on Component, Type and Project Certification of wind farms is scheduled for Shanghai, China and will be held in the Spring, 2015.