Touchwind B.V.
Offshore wind plays an important role in the energy transition, and in global and national climate goals. Wind turbines with higher efficiency and lower costs contribute to these goals. In recent years, TouchWind has worked to develop such an cost-efficient, floating wind turbine.
What is the wake effect?
Wind turbines extract energy from the wind, and convert it into electricity. However, a disadvantage is that behind these wind turbines there is less wind, it blows less hard (wind shadow). Turbines located behind other turbines are in their wind shadow, resulting in significantly lower efficiency.
POWER project investigates lowering the wake effect
With financial support from HER+, TouchWind is investigating and demonstrating within the POWER project how to reduce the cost of wind energy by drastically reducing the wake effect (wind shadow) of offshore wind farms. Ten experimental turbines with tilted rotors are being developed and built. The tilted rotors allow the turbines to be placed much closer together than conventional turbines. In this way, the amount of installed capacity of 10MW per km2 can be achieved.
TouchWind and consortium partners TNO, We4Ce, Marin, Nidec and MOL are conducting research with these tilted turbines. The POWER project will test and monitor different park set-ups (configuration and distance), first on land, then on water. The data obtained will be used to develop, test and validate numerical models that calculate and predict the behaviour of the wake effect in wind farms with tilted rotors.
What will the POWER project deliver?
The aim of the POWER project is to reduce the cost of offshore wind energy production by installing more turbines per km2 without loss of efficiency. Based on calculation, a cost reduction of 38.5 €/MWh (15.6%) is expected.
TouchWind and Hezelburcht E+M
Hezelburcht supported TouchWind in several projects, focused on offshore wind. Successive developments are contributing to cost reduction in the offshore wind industry, an important development in achieving the climate goals. We are proud to be able to contribute in this way.
