Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy SystemsNew European Wind Atlas published
Researchers from all over Europe have now completed the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA) within the R&D project of the same name. The University of Oldenburg with the Center for Wind Energy Research (ForWind), the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology IEE, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES made up the German national consortium in the European research project. Together with their international partners from all across Europe, they worked on developing and validating new methods for the assessment of wind conditions with the aim of supporting the identification of optimal sites for new wind farm projects. The completed wind atlas was presented to the German national wind industry in the scope of the final NEWA stakeholder event in Hanover on July 2, 2019. The week before, on June 27, 2019, it had already been launched internationally in Brussels.
30 partners from academia and industry from eight European countries contributed to the realization of the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA). The researchers developed and validated new methods for assessing the relevant wind resources. One central aim of the wind atlas project was the development of standardized online maps for site assessment.
Jakob Mann, professor at DTU Wind Energy and coordinator of the international consortium, explained, “NEWA is the largest and most detailed data set for the validation and assessment of wind conditions.”
With the application of a weather forecasting model, the wind conditions of the past 30 years were simulated for the whole of Europe with a resolution of 3 km. Information about the long-term wind climate at each grid point in the EU can be accessed via a web interface: this includes interactive maps, time series data, and statistics concerning wind speed as well as other parameters of relevance to the wind industry at different altitudes. “The scope and level of detail of the New European Wind Atlas will form a new basis for the development of wind energy projects in Europe”, said IWES researcher and national project coordinator Dr. Bernhard Lange.
The international project NEWA started in 2015 and was financed via national funding programs in the partner countries and EU funding to the sum of €13.5 million. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy provided around €1.5 million for the project. The project results will make it possible to assess the European wind resources with greater accuracy, which, in turn, will contribute to the reduction of energy costs for the wind energy sector.
NEWA is now freely available to all at: https://map.neweuropeanwindatlas.eu/.
ForWind is the joint center for wind energy research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen and forms a unique research network in Germany. Forwind’s research covers a broad engineering and physical spectrum and accompanies industrially oriented projects scientifically.
Contact: Dr. Björn Witha, phone: +49 441 798-5075,
email: bjoern.witha@forwind.de, www.forwind.de
The Fraunhofer IEE in Kassel researches for the national and international transformation of energy supply systems. It has established itself in the fields of energy and energy system technology.
Contact: Dr.-Ing. Paul Kühn, phone: +49 561 7294-351,
email: Paul.kuehn@iee.fraunhofer.de, www.iee.fraunhofer.de
Fraunhofer IWES ensures investments in technological developments in the field of wind energy through its validation services. By operating large test rigs, it accelerates the market introduction of innovative products, enhances certification processes and increases planning security by using state-of-the-art measurement techniques
Contact: Dr. Julia Gottschall. phone: +49 471 14290-354,
email: julia.gottschall@iwes.fraunhofer.de, www.iwes.fraunhofer.de
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