EU Horizon 2020 to finance Nabrawind Technologies with €1.7 million
Nabrawind Technologies has been awarded from the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument program, which will provide financing to the Spanish company for a value of 1.7 million euros. The project presented by Nabrawind was successfully defended on July 9th in Brussels before an international tribunal specialized in investment. The jury, representing the European Commission, assessed the potential of XXL wind towers and modular blades as a response to the logistical barriers that threaten the growth of the wind sector.
This achievement means a great success for the company since the approval rate of this program is only 4% of over 2000 projects presented in each call.
Horizon 2020 funds will be used by Nabrawind to drive the market entry of their two technologies, the Nabralift self-erecting tower, which can exceed 200 meters in height, and the Nabrajoint modular blade joint, which simplifies the transport of blades of more than 70m in length.
In 2018, the company successfully installed a 160m high self-erecting tower prototype in Eslava (Navarra), the tallest wind tower in Spain, and completed full-scale tests of its modular blade joint. It was also recently announced that in 2020 Nabrawind will install the tallest tower in Africa with a height of 144m. But the challenge to the European Commission goes further. Nabrawind Technologies next step aims to overcome the 200m height, breaking the current world height record.
Eneko Sanz, General Manager of Nabrawind, argues, in addition to the importance of the amount that Nabrawind will receive, the fact that “the European Commission joins those who believe that the future of wind energy passes through the transition to high-powered wind turbines, and the implementation of modular blades to overcome the logistical challenges that the sector is facing.” In this way, Sanz emphases his conviction that Nabrawind’s products “will contribute to eliminate the logistical restrictions of onshore wind energy, so that in the near future onshore wind turbines will have the same dimensions and power as offshore turbines, which currently are up to four times more powerful.”
Sanz also expressed his gratitude to the Horizon 2020 program, which has positively valued Nabrawind’s proposal, as well as to the consulting firm Bantec Group, “which has advised and helped us throughout the process.”
About H2020 SME Program
Phase II of the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument (EIC Accelerator), from which Nabrawind has benefited, is an instrument of the European Commission created with the aim of encouraging European SMEs whose activity promotes the technological and competitive development of Europe in certain strategic sectors, including energy transition. The fund is endowed with 80,000 million euros for the six-year period 2014-2020 and its demanding evaluation system means that only 4% of over 2,000 candidates presented in this edition have received funding.