Solid Edge and Teamcenter Express Set to Power Narec’s Wind and Marine Renewable Engineers
Cutting Edge Solutions Ltd (CES), a leading solution partner of Siemens Industry Software, today announced a new partnership with Narec (The National Renewable Energy Centre) providing an integrated CAD/PLM solution to their growing team of design engineers.
Narec is entering a new build phase for offshore renewable R&D and commercial testing facilities in Blyth, Northumberland.Narec already has the only full-scale blade testing facility in the UK, with a capability developed over the last five years, serving the global wind supply chain and industrial research community.
CES successfully tendered for the new system last year with a solution to accommodate the development of these new assets and to handle the forecasted growth in mechanical design activity at Narec.
The solution combines components from the Siemens PLM Software Velocity Series. These are extremely powerful applications, which are scalable into the complete Siemens PLM suite of tools for the most demanding technological applications. All of the tools benefit from being industry leading and backed by the strength, stability and reputation for a quality associated by the Siemens brand.
CES will replace Narec’s previous design systems (Inventor and Product Stream) and supply Solid Edge, the industry’s leading mechanical design system and Teamcenter Express, the highly efficient product data management solution. Both software components form part of the Siemens PLM Velocity Series and through utilising this technology and its own professional services team, CES is able to construct a cost-effective solution to satisfy the immediate requirements of Narec and also to provide a firm foundation for future expansion.
Mark Taylor, Senior Mechanical Engineer, states that “Narec chose Solid Edge and Teamcenter Express because we were looking for a cost effective solution to provide a readily available transition to improve capability. Due to the synergy with the NX software platform, Solid Edge provides the ideal stepping stone into high-end functionality like Simulation thereby providing the upgradeable path that we were looking for. Cutting Edge Solutions were very helpful throughout the benchmarking exercise and have been fully supportive and accommodating when implementing the software into Narec.”
About Narec
Narec is the National Renewable Energy Centre and is dedicated to advancing the development, deployment and grid integration of renewable energy and low carbon generation technologies, utilising wind, wave, tidal, solar PV and thermal power, visit http://www.narec.co.uk
Recent investment and future proposals at Narec include:
• In February, Narec was awarded an £18.5 million grant for a 100MW Offshore Demonstration Platform by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). This funding will enable Narec to progress with our plans to deliver a 100MW grid connected offshore demonstration platform, with the capacity to accommodate up to 20 large-scale prototypes at an offshore wind test site off Blyth, Northumberland.
• Funding for the build of a major turbine component and drive train testing rig has the support of the Energy technologies Institute (ETI) and One North East (ONE). These plans, to design the world’s largest open access offshore wind turbine drive train test rig, were announced by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) in February 2010. The test rig design specification is a result of nearly two years of engineering development and industry consultation by Narec and ETI. ONE will invest £10 million in the building to house the rig.
• Narec recently announced construction of a 100m offshore wind turbine blade facility, extending our current capability to test the largest of offshore blades. This £15 million facility will receive public investment of £11.5m from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
• In March this year, Narec opened a new 27m high training facility – the UK’s first Wind Turbine Training Tower, recently installed at Narec in Blyth, Northumberland. The Training Tower is the result of a collaborative training partnership, backed by Regional development Agency, One North East, between Northumberland College, Mainstream Renewable Power and Narec. It is an open access facility, designed to allow education and training providers to deliver academic and industrial training programmes for technicians working in the wind industry and at height, both onshore and offshore.