ForWind, the centre for wind energy research at the universities of Oldenburg, Hanover and Bremen, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (IWES) have joined forces to form the "National Wind Energy Research Network". This was announced by ForWind Managing Director Dr. Stephan Barth and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Reuter, Director of Fraunhofer IWES, at the "Leibniz Future Dialogue" on the topic of "How does wind get into the grid?" at the University of Hanover on 19 May 2011.

More than 430 employees in 35 Institutes and research institutions are working in the new research network. They have access to a research infrastructure for basic and application-orientated studies. Examples include a supercomputer for flow simulations, the world's largest wave tunnel and a unique test rig for rotor blades up to 90 metres in length. With the merger, ForWind and IWES cover almost the entire spectrum of wind energy technology - from energy meteorology to the rotor blade to the drive train, from the nacelle to the support structure to the subsoil.

"By pooling our research activities, we are now in a position to keep pace with the internationally leading research networks in Denmark and the USA. Our research has thus reached a level that corresponds to the technological leadership of the German wind energy industry," explains Prof Reuter.

The close co-operation between ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES is ensured by the Fraunhofer project groups in Oldenburg and Hanover as well as by the University of Bremen's offshore construction research. One current project of the "National Wind Energy Research Network" is the "WindPowerCluster" application in the leading-edge cluster competition of the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which ForWind and IWES are organising together with the Wind Energy Agency WAB. Over the past two years, ForWind, IWES and WAB have woven over 300 research institutions and wind energy companies in the north-west region into a complex economic and research network. The cluster is the only project in the wind energy sector within the framework of the Leading-Edge Cluster Competition.

The first joint programme of the "National Wind Energy Research Network" is the "Wind Energy 2020" research initiative. It aims to implement the German government's target of generating 35 per cent of electricity from renewable energies by 2020. This means that the wind energy sector in Germany is facing enormous challenges: For example, wind energy must be sensibly integrated into a sustainable energy supply concept. The technology must be reliable and internationally competitive, and the new wind farms must be constructed and operated in an environmentally friendly manner and in consensus with the local residents affected.

"Wind Energy 2020" therefore networks research with the German wind energy industry and answers technical and economic research questions with a multidisciplinary scope. In multi-year projects, which are developed and implemented together with the industry, the expansion of wind energy utilisation is being driven forward in a cost-efficient, sustainable and long-term manner and the competitiveness of wind energy compared to conventional power plants is being continuously improved.

At the centre of the research initiative is, among other things, the optimal utilisation of wind as a resource and the available space for the realisation of offshore wind farms with a capacity of several gigawatts. This also includes new types of load and noise-reduced rotor blades, the optimisation of support structures for more cost-effective offshore wind turbines and the development of robust generator and drive train systems that support the grid.