Sören Sieberlng AP-3 Project Manager
Ampyx Power B.V. Lulofsstraat 55, unit 13 2521 AL The Hague The Netherlands soeren@ampyxpower.com www.ampyxpower.com
Status Update and Review of the AP-3 Development
Jaap Bosch, Sören Sieberling, Stefan Wilhelm Ampyx Power B.V.
With the development of AP-3, the pre-commercial demonstrator of Ampyx Power, we aimed to advance Ampyx Power on the ladder from start-up to developer of certifiable multi-megawatt scale AWES. This paper dis-cusses what it takes to work towards a certifiable system. It will give an update on where Ampyx Power stands with the development of AP-3.
In order to professionalize, Ampyx Power has made a fun-damental change in its work approach compared to the earlier prototypes, AP-1 and AP-2. The design has been built up from scratch, by defining overall program objec-tives and success criteria in 2014. System engineering processes are applied hierarchically in order to create a safe, consistent and traceable design, resulting in thou-sands of item and component requirements which will be formally verified before integrating them into systems and finally into the AWES facility.
The AP-3 design includes the avionics, system architec-ture and safety approach of the commercial certifiable AP-4 product. It is going through EASA approval of flight conditions to support a permit to fly.
Ampyx Power has specified and implemented its work
processes in a tailored Quality Management System (QMS) including e.g. task specific templates and work orders, as well as guiding procedures, work instructions and trainings. Ampyx Power has recorded all design trade-offs and made design justifications and captured the results in design requirements from facility level to item level. Within the AP-3 program Ampyx Power has built an inventory management system and set up in-coming inspections and captured non-conformances and their resolutions. In principle all engineers have peers with whom they have built up shared knowledge and with whom they review each other’s work. The full scale of the QMS is exploited and supported by a powerful custom software tool. With its QMS, Ampyx Power is less depen-dent on specific individuals than before.
The design and modelling suite has been upgraded, through multiple external validations, as well as through extensive CFD analysis and simulation hours. It will be supplemented with flight data to verify the predictability of performance. To ramp up the operational experience, a full-scale test center is under development in County Mayo, Ireland.
