EWTW facilitates wind turbine experiment with high-performance measurement equipment to accelerate time to market.
At the Wind Turbine Testpark Wieringermeer, ECN facilitates experiments with wind turbines, support structures and electrical infrastructure. For installation, logistics, operation and maintenance purposes. In addition to five research turbines and five meteo masts, wind turbine manufacturers are testing their prototypes. This test park delivers new data and knowledge to validate design software and shorten time-to-market for manufacturers. There are plans for expansion.
In 2003, ECN opened the Wind Turbine Testpark Wieringermeer (EWTW). Five ECN wind turbines situated with a power of 2.5 MW are built to conduct research into wind energy. In addition there are six prototype wind turbines of Siemens, Vestas, General Electric, XEMC-Darwind and Alstom-Ecotechnia. These prototypes, with a capacity between 2.7 MW and a height of 80 to 135 meters are used by the manufacturers to test their new designs together with ECN. ECN is implementing extensive measurement programs for the prototypes, to check whether the wind turbine design complies with the real world.
To support the measurements, five meteo masts of 108 meters measure wind speeds and wind directions at different positions and heights. This allows a comparison of wind turbine's behavior and performance in different wind conditions. In addition, noise production and mechanical load of the turbine are mapped.
The test field has a good wind climate for (prototype) measurements of 8.2 m / s at 110 m height. In addition, the site is well-accessible for large turbines, has a 50 kV network connection and a general license for prototypes.
