The purpose of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 55 REFWIND is to coordinate international efforts toward the rigorous definition of reference wind turbines and plants. The reference systems address land-based applications as well as fixed-bottom and floating offshore installations.
The reference systems are designed collaboratively from organizations across the world and are fully open source. The designs are suitable for studies around new technologies to maximize the value of wind energy as well as studies investigating the social and environmental impact of wind energy.
This Task builds upon the successful efforts conducted within the now-concluded IEA Wind Task 37 on Wind Energy Systems Engineering: Integrated Research, Design, Development and Operation.
Task 55 also continues the series of successful workshops around systems engineering for wind energy, promoting studies around multi-fidelity, risk-aware, and multi-disciplinary approaches to solve design problems for existing and future wind energy systems. The main workshops led by the new Task will be the 7th and 8th Wind Energy Systems Engineering (WESE) Workshops, which will be held in 2024 and 2026, respectively. The 6th WESE Workshop was held in Boulder, CO, co-organized by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Technical University of Denmark, working together within Task 37.

Task 55 works in tight collaboration with existing IEA Wind Tasks, such as Task 43 on Wind Digitalization, Task 47 on Aerodynamics, Task 49 on Floating Wind Arrays, and Task 50 on Hybrid Power Plants.