DTU-TotalEnergies Excellence Centre for Clean Energy

About

The DTU-TotalEnergies Excellence Centre for Clean Energy (DTEC) is a new research and educational initiative that aims to speed up the development of critical energy technologies. The centre is part of DTU, located at the DTU Risø campus near Roskilde in Denmark.

The purpose of DTEC is to conduct research and develop technology in clean energy with a particular focus on wind power generation. DTEC will develop and demonstrate world-class technology solutions within, e.g., offshore wind, hybrid systems and green hydrogen technologies.

2024, the hybrid power plant facility, Risø Hybrid Power Plant, was inaugurated. The plant integrating wind, solar, batteries, hydrogen, and power electronics technologies is a crucial part of DTU’s research into a more sustainable energy supply and an essential tool in the work to develop and test new technologies before they are scaled up.

Anders O. Bjarklev, President of Technical University of Denmark, and Marie-Noëlle Semeria, Chief Technology Officer of TotalEnergies
DTEC couples world-leading expertise in wind and energy systems of DTU with TotalEnergies’ global energy presence and targets in clean energy development
DTU logo in blue
TotalEnergies logo

Work Programmes

Work programme 1

Advanced Clean Energy Research

DTEC executes impact-driven research. DTU’s world-leading expertise in renewable energy is focused under DTEC on solving research challenges inspired by real projects. Working with TotalEnergies technical staff, DTU researchers identify opportunities to advance science and engineering for a broad range of applications in clean energy. DTEC already has research projects underway in several areas, including offshore wind energy, hybrid power plants, thermal storage, solar photovoltaics, and grid services/integration – with projects in additional focus areas in development.

Work Programme 2

Clean Energy Technical Services

DTEC provides clean energy technical services. Through technical services, existing knowledge and technical solutions are used to support near-term needs for the current portfolio of TotalEnergies clean energy pro-jects in development and operation. This in-volves a number of activities including:
• Software training and development services
• Software tool development
• Instrumentation and measurement campaigns
• Technology evaluation and testing
• Consulting services and expert advice

Work Programme 3

Hybrid Power Plant Facility

DTEC demonstrates and validates new clean energy innovations. The Risø HPP is a DTU and TotalEnergies jointly developed facility – integrated to existing DTU test facilities at the Risø campus. Phase I is focused on AC-connected electrical hybrid power plants with wind turbines, solar PV, battery storage and generation/load emulation capabilities.

Work programme 4

Clean Energy Training and Innovation

DTEC trains the future clean energy work-force.Training programmes are developed that target proficiencies needed for new hires, managers, engineers transitioning from other sectors, and even technical specialists. Innovation programmes provide DTU students and staff an opportunity to get involved and work on ideation for solutions to real-world technical challenges.

Risø Hybrid Power Plant

Get an overview of the Risø Hybrid Power Plant

Get an insight into what the hybrid power plant does 

Projects and Activities

Colleagues at DTU are welcome to join DTEC projects and activities if you’re interested in the research areas above.

In advanced clean energy research, our first successful research collaboration was the project Design of Floating Wind Farm Collection Systems Accounting for Dynamic Cable Performance and Reliability (DYNAMOD).

This project developed a software tool for the multi-physics design of the electrical collection system for a floating offshore wind farm, where the electric cables are suspended in water and, thus, can move around – following the motions of the turbines themselves, which we modelled in detail.

Status: Completed

Design cost reduction – spreading costs for infrastructure, logistics, transmission access, and more across the assets

Increased revenues – ability to increase participation, or improve operational strategies for participation, in various electricity markets (energy, capacity, and service)

Project Manager: Professor Poul Sørensen, DTU Wind

Status: 2021–2027

Hybrid Power Plants (Hybrids & Storage)
  • Main activities:
  • Develops models able to capture the need for services for the future sector-coupled energy system
  • Quantifies the needs for balancing and ancillary services requirements for future energy systems, for which the power plants need to be designed
  • Evaluates the technology’s ability and impact in providing the services
  • Model validation, and standardisation

Project Managers: Associate Professor Kaushik Das, DTU Wind; Researcher Oscar Saborío-Romano, DTU Wind

Status: 2025–2028

Rotor Technology De-risking (Wind)

The project aims to establish a holistic, life-cycle technology development and feasibility assessment framework for the de-risking of new technology.

Main activities:

  • Risk-based technology qualification framework
  • Automatic design performance assessmen
  • Technology qualification, and criteria beyond LCOE

Project Manager: Senior Researcher Nikolay Dimitrov, DTU Wind

Status: 2024–2027

 

Main activities:

  • Evaluate solutions for self-energisation and blackstart capability of offshore wind power plants such as Seagreen
  • Establish (more) reliable grid-forming controls
  • Improve methodologies for energisation and handling of inrush currents
  • Determine energy storage requirements for wind turbine start-up
  • Determine the minimum number of grid-forming wind turbines required to provide the service

Project Manager: Researcher Oscar Saborío-Romano, DTU Wind

Status: 2024–2028

 

Main activities:

  • Reduce uncertainty about external wake in yield assessments
  • Uncertainty quantification with future development
  • Wind farm layout optimisation
  • Optimise wind farm performance

Project Manager: Head of Section Pierre-Elouan Réthoré, DTU Wind

Status: 2024–2028

 

Main activities:

The project addresses potential induced degradation (PID) in utility-scale PV modules under high system voltages, aiming to quantify PID sensitivity and recovery potential across varying module designs, materials, and soiling conditions.

  • Field and accelerated stress testing
  • Model development for degradation and recovery
  • Benchmarking of commercial anti-PID solutions

It should lead to robust, data-driven PID models and test methods, progressing the technology from TRL 3 to TRL 6.

Project Manager: Associate Professor Sergiu Spataru, DTU Electro

Status: 2024–2028

 
  • Develops a biodiversity sensing and analysis protocol that is replicable across sites, can be maintained for the lifespan of a platform, and can be scaled up sensibly to meet the needs of the growth in offshore wind
  • Informs how floating platforms affect local ecosystems
  • Tests reliability and redundancies in biodiversity sensing, and develops an analytical pipeline to integrate sensor flows to estimate essential biodiversity variables

Project Manager: Professor David Lusseau, DTU Aqua

Status: 2024–2028

Main activities:

  • Develop and optimise a thermo-tolerant bacterial strain to accelerate the biomineralisation process
  • Identify and evaluate suitable industrial waste streams as sources of calcium ions for the process
  • Scale up the process in a 10L bioreactor to generate high-quality data for assessing economic feasibility and environmental sustainability
  • Address technical challenges to enable industrial-scale application of biomineralisation-based CO₂ capture

Project Manager: Professor Ivan Mijakovic, DTU Biosustain

Status: 2025–2027

The purpose of BICAP is to upscale and develop the bipolar membranes concept further for CO₂ capture by electrodialysis. Key questions are:

  • How is the bipolar membrane polarisation response affected by the CO₂ capture working fluids, and potential contamination?
  • How should we optimise and tune the bipolar membrane for this application?

Project Manager: Associate Professor David Aili, DTU Energy

Training activities

Show all events

25

aug

28

aug

Learning Expedition in Renewable Energies (LEX-REN)

25. aug - 28. aug 23:30

14

sep

26

sep

TotalEnergies Graduate Program

14. sep - 26. sep 23:30

19

okt

24

okt

Wind Farm Design

20. okt 00:30 - 24. okt 23:30

05

nov

06

nov

Advanced PV Plant Design and Optimisation Using PVsyst

05. nov - 06. nov 23:30 | TotalEnergies, Paris, France
Show all events
For more information about the upcoming trainings, please contact DTEC’s Director of Education and Training, Hamid Sarlak: hsar@dtu.dk

The DTEC Centre is located at DTU Risø campus in Roskilde

 Organisation

DTEC is established as a centre for research, innovation and education at DTU and is funded by TotalEnergies. Its headquarters are located at the DTU Risø Campus.

DTEC is led by Head of Centre Gregor Giebel from DTU Wind and Energy Systems. A joint DTU-TotalEnergies steering committee oversees the centre‘s planning and operation.

As a strategic partnership, programmes under DTEC involve technical staff both at DTU and TotalEnergies. DTU staff lead and manage projects and work with TotalEnergies staff to ensure the transfer of knowledge for impact to real-world projects.

Scientific Directors

DTEC research activities are overseen by the Scientific Committee composed of Scientific Directors at DTU and TotalEnergies. The committee leads the development of collaboration roadmaps for DTEC research and technology development activities.

The DTU directors are:

Outreach

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Get in touch

For press related inquiries, please contact DTU's press officer:

Tel: +45 45 25 78 78
Email: presse@dtu.dk

Gregor Giebel

Opinion

100% renewable energy possible with existing technology

There is enough renewable energy, and we have the technology to harvest it. The challenge is how to connect the technologies and distribute the energy when needed. We do not require a new miracle technology that can produce energy for us.
Diagram of the facilities

Press release

Clean energy at the core of DTU and TotalEnergies collaboration

DTU and TotalEnergies have agreed to set up a collaboration that will lead to the establishment of a centre of excellence within the field of wind hybrid systems.

Articles about DTEC

DTU and TotalEnergies establish a clean energy research center (Source: TotalEnergies)

DTU og TotalEnergies i nyt samarbejde om hybridkraftværker og brintteknologier (In Danish, Source: ENERGY SUPPLY)

The DTU TotalEnergies Excellence Centre is now official (Source: DTU Wind)

Nyt hybridkraftværk på DTU styrker forskning i vedvarende energi (Press release, source: Ritzau)

TotalEnergies og DTU indvier nyt hybridkraftværk til forskning i vedvarende energikilder (Source: TotalEnergies)