Optimising the design and operation of Wind Power Plants
CONTEXT
The wind industry is developing modern wind turbines and innovative airborne wind energy plants that are set to play a more and more significant role in the energy transition to a climate-neutral society.
Today, wind energy is one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the world. The wind industry is developing ever-larger wind turbines and airborne wind energy devices to harvest the wind at higher altitudes. This leads to a further expansion of wind energy’s capabilities and community benefits.
According to the European Electricity Review 2026 by EMBER, wind and solar energy together accounted for 30% of EU electricity generation in 2025, surpassing fossil fuels at 29%. Overall, renewables provided nearly half of Europe’s power, confirming their central role in the continent’s energy mix.
Among renewables, wind energy stood out as a cornerstone of the system. Supplying around 17% of EU electricity, wind became the second-largest source of power, ahead of gas and coal.
CHALLENGES
Society needs clean energy, produced efficiently, without burning any fuel or polluting the air.
Wind power is a clean and renewable energy source. Wind generation devices aerodynamically extract power from the wind and use the resulting mechanical power to spin a generator and create electricity. Not only is wind an abundant and inexhaustible resource, but it also provides electricity without burning any fuel or polluting the air.
These are just some of the challenges tackled by MERIDIONAL:
• How to fully understand the inflow conditions, as well as the loads on wind farms and airborne wind energy devices;
• How to increase the accuracy and reduce the uncertainty on performance;
• What is the best way to combine measurements, and models of different fidelities to accurately and efficiently predict loads and performance.
SOLUTIONS
MERIDIONAL provided a comprehensively validated toolchain based on an open source platform. This draws on an integrated knowledge and data hub to allow the efficient and accurate assessment of the performance and loads experienced by onshore, offshore, and airborne wind energy systems.
MERIDIONAL simulated the unsteady inflow conditions, the performance, and loads experienced by onshore, offshore, and airborne wind energy systems to achieve this.
The project drew on the latest software and hardware solutions, including an open-source management platform, to predict wind plant performance.
Once refined, the MERIDIONAL solution framework was put to the test through use cases. These use cases consist of onshore, offshore, and airborne sites focusing on wind performance, design practice, and operation. This important step demonstrated the MERIDIONAL tool chain’s capabilities to support better design and operation of wind plant for all situations.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Optimized wind power plants
Leaner design
Contribution to research on decarbonization and CO₂-free global economy
Support the creation of long-term sustainable jobs in the wind sector
BENEFITS
The MERIDIONAL data, model and tool chain guarantees a set of benefits for the full wind energy research and industrial community. They include:
- Effective and efficient tools for planning and designing wind farms and airborne wind energy systems;
- Guidelines for the application of modelling tools for performance and load assessment;
- Insights into what model fidelity is required for what situation.