'Adapted and lightly edited from: http://swipproject.eu/?page_id=12146

The main objective of the SWIP project is to develop and validate innovative solutions for small and medium size wind turbines to improve their competitiveness, enabling and facilitating the integration and deployment into urban and peri-urban areas.

The new and innovative solutions address the current barriers (turbulence, noise, vibration, aesthetic aspect, cost of technology, wind resource assessment, wind market, user friendliness, social acceptance and safety) that delay the market uptake of this technology. These solutions will: *reduce the costs of the electric generator of wind turbines, providing two new concepts for energy generation;

• increase the Cp ratio of the blades, so that the number of hours that the SWT is producing increases by 9%--highly softening or even eliminating the mechanical and acoustic noise they currently produce;
• reduce the maintenance costs of the SWTs up to 40% by including two innovative elements (SCADA for preventive maintenance and magnetic gearbox) in the SWTs, and improving the integration of the wind turbines in buildings and districts with more aesthetic solutions.

The project develops three different prototypes to be integrated in three different scenarios (new energy efficient building, shore-line, and industrial area), to validate the solutions and goals aimed, providing scalable solutions for different applications, covering several user needs. Moreover, the project improves current methodologies for wind resource assessment into urban and peri-urban areas, reducing the RMS error in wind speed estimation until 8%, minimizing the risk and the opportunity costs of the small and medium size wind turbines when they are integrated in these environments.

SWIP Project lasted 3 years and 8 months and was coordinated by CIRCE. Altogether, the project involved 13 partners from 10 different countries in the EU, covering the most relevant stakeholders: six SME, one large industry, five research centers, and one public authority.