Together with ForWind (Center for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen) and IWES (Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology) the DLR is establishing a research facility for wind energy, called DFWind („Deutsche Forschungsplattform für Windenergie“). The primary research topics are:
The department is responsible for data acquisition and data management. The main requirements are:
It is intended to equip the research turbines with an experimental control system, i.e. an environment shall be created which allows the test of new control concepts without recertification of the facility. This shall enable load reduction techniques and new actuators to be tested. The idea for the realization makes use of a so-called Advanced Protection System, always allowing a safe operation of the wind turbine. Within this safe environment it shall be possible to test experimental code without additional certification.