| Work Detail |
A new research project – which gathers industry and academia partners from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark – is said to enable a more accurate modelling of offshore wind energy wake effects in the North Sea. The joint research project, named EuroWindWakes, launched in late 2024 with the aim of significantly increasing the accuracy of forecasts to facilitate optimised maritime spatial planning and allow reliable forecasting of power production. The project is set to run for three years. EuroWindWakes industry partners include RWE, BP, EnBW and TotalEnergies, research institutes Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES), Technical University of Denmark, Delft University of Technology, Deutscher Wetterdienst, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, and consultancies and innovation companies Pondera Consult, EMD International, and DHI. The focus of the project is the North Sea, where the world’s densest installation of offshore wind turbines is expected, with very evident wake effects and an impact on foreseeable power production, according to the project partners. The EuroWindWakes team is working on models that will help minimise efficiency losses of offshore wind turbines through optimised wind farm planning. “All three countries involved have already carried out large-scale wake research on smaller scales. EuroWindWakes reduces uncertainty in the assessment of long-distance wake effects on the North Sea scale, enabling optimal asset siting in applications like maritime spatial planning”, says Dr. Bernhard Stoevesandt, project coordinator at Fraunhofer IWES. Current models used to calculate energy yields can depict wake effects with great uncertainty, and the project aims to reduce the inaccuracy of the predictions from 20-30 per cent to 10 per cent by improving and validating existing methods. |
