CENER hosts a technical meeting of the International Energy Agency

5 May 2010

The reduction of energy production in wind farms may be affected by several effects, mainly related to the topology of the location and the local wind conditions, characterised by the velocity, direction, atmospheric turbulence and stability. From this viewpoint, the influence of the wind turbine wakes is an interesting subject to study, due to the deficit in amount of movement and increase in level of turbulence created, whose effect is a reduction in energy production and an increase in the fatigue loads in the wind turbines. These are the main subjects that will be discussed for two days by the group of experts who form part of the wind section of the International Energy Agency – IEA-, which has been coordinated by CENER since last year, a post occupied by Felix Avia, currently responsible for the offshore wind energy research line in the Department of Wind Energy of CENER.

The group of technicians who have met over these two days in CENER, of 9 different nationalities, belong to the following technology centres and enterprises: Vatenfall Vindkraft AB (Sweden), SgurrEnergy Ltd (Scotland), RES (Great Britain), Alamos National Laboratory (USA), , National Renewable Energy Laboratory-NREL (USA) Uni Research, BCCS (Norway), Garrad Hassan (Spain), Carl Von Ossieztky University of Oldenburg (Germany), ECN Wind Energy (Holland) and CENER.

In the case of CENER, it acts as a coordinator and organiser of the actions carried out by this group of experts, which combines 24 organisations from 20 countries, all of which are members of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). These actions contemplate the organisation of four international meetings of experts each year, the management of concerted actions of the centre, as well as the preparation of test recommendations (Recommended Practices IEA).

The wind energy group of IEA started its activity in 1977 with the main objective of encouraging and supporting technological development among all the countries participating in the agreement, as well as coordinating research and development activities and programmes.

The next meetings of this group will be held in Japan and Norway.

More information: www.iea.org