The University of Bedfordshire (www.beds.ac.uk) and TWI Ltd have formed a partnership that will see them jointly fund and establish the Renewables Innovation Centre, a world-class hub for engineering-based renewable-energy R&D.

Based at TWI’s Cambridge headquarters (www.twi-global.com), the centre will carry out programmes designed to identify, test and qualify new sustainable-energy technologies.

With a focus on the lifecycle of infrastructure and assets, its research will cover: maintenance, inspection and monitoring services; grid, power generation, networks and distribution; failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA); risk assessment and remaining useful life; installation, comm-issioning and decommissioning; and digitalisation of legacy systems.

Digital technologies have been used by the renewable-energy sector for decades, but recent years have seen a rapid expansion in the number and type of applications available.

While this has the potential to bring greater efficiency, flexibility and co-ordination to the management of energy end-use sectors (and wider industry), such technologies can be costly to implement and run.

Therefore, a key objective of the Renewables Innovation Centre will be to reduce the final system and application costs in order to make them more competitive.