ECN develops knowledge and technology for the energy industry, enabling a transition to a sustainable energy system. With branches in Europe and Asia and high-level expertise in the fields of wind and solar energy, bio-energy, energy efficiency and policy studies, ECN plays a leading role in energy R&D worldwide.

ECN Wind Energy focuses its activities on the need of industry and government through target-oriented development and transfer of knowledge and technology. Its focus is offshore wind energy, being one of the main contributors to a sustainable electricity supply.
ECN Wind Energy employs 55 experts and holds a strategic position between universities and industry.

Role of ECN within MareWint

In MARE-WINT ECN started a 36-months PhD program to further develop the ECNS code (Energy-Conserving Navier-Stokes solver). This incompressible code is specifically suited for computing unsteady turbulent wakes in offshore wind farms. Large Eddy Simulations are presently tested with ECNS, with wind-turbine blades described by actuator forces. The purpose of ECNS is to increase the understanding of the flow physics of wind-turbine wakes, and to improve the models in FarmFlow. FarmFlow is ECN’s tool for designing efficient wind farms, as well as for operating existing wind farms in a more efficient way. A wind farm operates efficiently, when the power production of the wind farm balances well with the undesired fatigue loads experienced by each wind turbine.

Next to the PhD program, ECN will also organize a 4-day technical workshop about wind turbine aerodynamics, wind farm aerodynamics and wind turbine design.

Scaled wind farm. The value of wind tunnel data as an alternative for full scale measurements is limited due to scaling effects. ECN has overcome these problems by building a scaled wind farm facility.