The Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) is part of the IntelliWind consortium, a project funded by the European Commission to the tune of four million euros, which aims to train a generation of researchers in the development of intelligent systems to support the autonomous management of wind farms.

The main aim of this project is to reduce the role and need for direct intervention by human beings in the decision-making, operation and maintenance process, freeing them up to carry out more elaborate, efficient and well-planned tasks, which will lead to a significant improvement in cost efficiency and more viable wind farm operations.

This research aims to trigger a change of mentality in the skills and tasks applied in wind farm operations, moving from classic engineering tasks to designing, analysing and interacting with automatic algorithms.

Leading this research at the Faculty of Engineering is Filipe Magalhães, Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geo-Resources, and a member of CONSTRUCT – FEUP’s Institute for R&D in Structures and Construction, who will be joined by researchers Francisco Pimenta and Sérgio Bouça Pereira.

For Filipe Magalhães, the work at FEUP will improve the management of existing wind farms in Portugal. “This topic is very relevant to our country’s economic development, given the need to manage the current wind energy production infrastructure and the ambitious plans to exploit offshore wind energy. Our three PhD projects will focus on optimising hardware for structural monitoring, the development of digital twins for wind turbines, and advanced data processing methods using artificial intelligence, with application to floating onshore and offshore wind turbines”.

FEUP’s choice to participate in this project is something the Professor from the Department of Civil Engineering and Geo-Resources is proud of. “In this programme, 1066 applications were submitted in all areas of knowledge, and only 128 were selected for funding. FEUP’s participation in this very competitive programme, with the best European institutions, represents recognition of the work that has been carried out in the CONSTRUCT research group, in the area of structural analysis of wind generators, and is an opportunity for a very significant strengthening of this line of research”.

The research by Filipe Magalhães, Francisco Pimenta and Sérgio Bouça Pereira began in September 2024 and runs until July 2028.

IntelliWind Consortium: the importance of pooling synergies

This consortium of 18 institutions is led by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Copenhagen and includes some of the best European universities, such as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), the Dutch Technical University of Delft (TUDELFT) and the German Technical University of Munich (TUM).

The three institutions feature in the top 20 of the world’s best universities in Engineering and Technology – in 5th, 14th and 19th place respectively – according to the QS World University Rankings 2025. FEUP is the only Portuguese institution in this consortium, which also includes the Spanish universities of Castilla (UCLM) and Granada (UGR).

In addition to these academic organisations, the IntelliWind project includes important industrial players in the wind sector such as Fraunhofer, Ramboll, Siemens, Vestas, Vattenfall, Ocean Winds, Quantia, Sydis, Engie, Nadara, and RTDT Laboratories.

The four million euros of funding will be distributed through 16 Marie Curie research grants, the European Union’s main funding programme for doctoral education and post-doctoral training of researchers.

This project is structured within the Doctoral Networks of the Marie Curie Fellowships, the aim of which is to implement doctoral programmes through partnerships of organisations from different sectors across Europe and beyond, to train highly qualified postgraduate students, stimulate their creativity, strengthen their innovation skills and increase their long-term employability.

IntelliWind is part of the ‘Excellent Science’ pillar – the first of three – of Horizon Europe, the European Commission’s multiannual framework programme that defines the main strategic guidelines for research and innovation, which includes the Marie Curie doctoral scholarships.