The European countries bordering the North Sea have set an expansion target for offshore wind energy: At least 260 GW of offshore wind capacity is to be installed by 2050. The world's densest installation of offshore wind turbines is expected in parts of the North Sea – with an impact on foreseeable power production. So-called wake effects will be very evident. The area downstream of the rotor surface is referred to as the wake. Due to the removal of momentum from the flow, this area has a reduced wind speed and an increased degree of turbulence due to the mixing with the undisturbed flow. This significantly reduces the electricity yields in the wake-affected wind farms. The EuroWindWakes project team is working on models that help to minimize efficiency losses of offshore wind turbines through optimized wind farm planning.

Current models used to calculate energy yields can only depict these wake effects with great uncertainty. The project partners aim to reduce the inaccuracy of the predictions from 20-30 percent to 10 percent by improving and validating existing methods. This increased forecast accuracy will enable optimized transnational maritime spatial planning and a more accurate forecast of power production. The EuroWindWakes team creates an essential prerequisite for exploiting the enormous potential of offshore wind energy. It is also an important influencing factor commercially, as uncertainty about the performance of wind turbines and wind farms has a significant impact on the profitability of offshore locations.

"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.

The project creates a truly geographically focused collaboration on this important issue. Jake Badger, Head of Section for Resource Assessment and Meteorology, at DTU Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark, adds: "The fact that the collaborating countries are North Sea neighbors opens opportunities to really work on cross-border effects of wind farms, and bring together stakeholders, including authorities, to use our methods and results in relation to long-term planning".

Anja Schönnebeck, national project coordinator at Pondera Consult emphasizes: "The prediction of wake effects from neighboring wind farms on the energy yield of an offshore wind farm varies significantly depending on the chosen wake model. This variation introduces high uncertainties in the financial planning of offshore wind farms. The EuroWindWakes project aims to reduce these uncertainties, improving the reliability of energy yield predictions."

At the kick-off meeting in February 2025, the project partners met to discuss the upcoming steps in the project. Fraunhofer IWES is responsible for the coordination of the overall project. The project will run for three years.

To the research project: EuroWindWakes

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Contact partner at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES

Project coordination
Dr. Bernhard Stoevesandt
Head of Department Aerodynamics and Numerical Wind Energy Meteorology
Phone: +49 441 798-5011
E-mail: bernhard.stoevesandt@iwes.fraunhofer.de

Fraunhofer IWES
The Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES conducts application-oriented research for a sustainable future. The focus topics of the Fraunhofer IWES are offshore, hydrogen, test infrastructure and digitalization. The research work in these future-oriented key technologies plays a central role in the innovation process and strengthens the business location for the benefit of our society by transferring the research results to industry. More than 400 employees at nine locations are developing innovative methods to accelerate the expansion of the wind energy and hydrogen economy, minimize risks, and increase cost efficiency.

Department of Wind and Energy Systems, Technical University of Denmark, DTU
DTU Wind and Energy Systems is one of the top wind energy research units in the world. With around 450 employees and a multidisciplinary portfolio of 130+ projects in over 40 countries. In wind energy meteorology and flow modelling, the department has a long history, e.g. European Wind Atlas, the widely used WAsP software and methodology, the Global Wind Atlas, and hosts the New European Wind Atlas. In wake modelling, DTU is developing new generations of mesoscale wind farm parameterisations (based on its Explicit Wake Parameterization method) and microscale tools in its pyWake open-source model suite.

Delft University of Technology
TU Delft is the Netherlands’ leading technical university comprising of 7600 staff, 26,000 students and 3500 PhD candidates working in eight faculties. It has one of Europe’s largest group of researchers working in wind energy with 150 staff and nearly 200 PhDs associated with wind energy research in some way. The TU Delft Wind Energy Institute acts as an umbrella for the wind energy activity and encompasses several groups active in wind energy research and teaching including the Wind Energy Section in the Aerospace Engineering faculty which comprises 70 staff and PhDs. In the EuroWindWakes project, Prof Simon Watson and his team in the Wind Energy Section will be developing CFD canopy models and reduced order multi-layer models to effectively and efficiently calculate cluster wake interactions. Furthermore, in collaboration with colleagues in the Mechanical Engineering faculty, they will investigate the potential for wind farm and cluster control to improve the wide area dispatch of offshore wind power.

Deutscher Wetterdienst
Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany's National Meteorological Service, is responsible for meeting the meteorological and climatological requirements arising from all areas of the economy and society in Germany, including specialized meteorological information for the renewable energy sector. DWD develops and operates a global-to-regional chain of numerical weather prediction system. With its ICON modeling framework (ICON global, EU, D2) and its ensemble data assimilation systems, numerical weather prediction at DWD is part of the internationally leading group of weather and climate modeling centers.
Within the EuroWindWakes project the team within DWD will work on the representation of wake effects of wind farms in the forecast chain, and evaluate the impact of large offshore wind farm clusters on weather and climate.

Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg
ForWind is the joint centre for wind energy research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hanover and Bremen. ForWind brings together wind energy research in the German north-west and links 30 institutes and working groups from the universities of Oldenburg, Hanover and Bremen. ForWind thus forms a research network that is unique in Germany and covers a broad spectrum of scientific topics. Research focuses on the fields of engineering, physics and meteorology, computer science and economics. The field of wind physics is part of the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg Institute of Physics. Scientists from the Wind Energy Systems group at this institute are participating in the EuroWindWakes project. Their main contribution to the project will be to provide data from high-fidelity simulations of the interaction between atmospheric flows and wind farm clusters for the further development and validation of computationally cheaper flow models.

Pondera Consult B.V.
Pondera offers expertise and tools to tackle complex energy transition challenges. We develop innovative, reliable solutions for future energy systems. Our focus has primarily been on wind and solar but has expanded to green hydrogen integration and battery storage in recent years. As part of Royal HaskoningDHV, we integrate engineering, design, and technology to deliver sustainable innovation globally.

EMD International A/S
EMD was founded in 1986 with the purpose to disseminate and develop knowledge, research and technology that can reduce the use of resources and support the green transition. It supports the transition to renewable energy through the development of software and modelling tools, data and calculation services, and consulting. EMD makes the market leading software tool windPRO for all aspects of the wind farm planning and development phase prior to installation. EMD offers tools for the operational phase of wind farms and for the analysis and optimal design and operation of energy systems with energyPRO.

DHI A/S
DHI is an independent, international consulting and research organization with offices in 26 countries, clients in 114 countries and more than 1100 employees. For more than 30 years, DHI has contributed to the development of offshore wind energy systems worldwide. DHI has supported 80% of commissioned offshore wind farms globally. The Offshore Wind Engineering segment is active, among other activities, on the investigation of meso-scale modelling of extreme and normal conditions of winds, waves and ocean currents, with particular focus on modelling the air-sea interaction via DHI's world-recognised modelling software, MIKE Powered by DHI.