The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA) project celebrated its kick-off meeting last 19 March at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Risø campus in Roskilde. This project aims at delivering, over the next five years, the best database of wind characteristics throughout Europe and a new generation of flow models to exploit this database.
The NEWA project is funded through an ERA-Net Plus instrument, of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme. The total budget is € 14 million. More than 30 institutions participate in the project, coordinated by DTU, including Fraunhofer-IWES and the Spanish National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) as work package leaders. This initiative will contribute to a reduction of the cost of wind energy by mitigating risks related to the design and operation of large-scale wind turbines based on enhanced knowledge of wind conditions. The project plans to carry out high-fidelity experiments in various terrain and wind climate conditions across Europe, from offshore and coastal winds in Northern Europe, to forested, complex terrain and cold climate conditions in Germany, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. These experiments will be based on conventional mast instrumentation as well as extensive use of remote sensing capabilities from the WindScanner European infrastructure network. A probabilistic wind atlas methodology will be developed, based on a multi-model ensemble of simulations, in order to produce the best long-term estimates plus uncertainties of atmospheric variables relevant for spatial planning and wind farm design applications. An open-source platform will interconnect the different models participating in the model-chain using common interfacing standards.