In the Baltic Sea, where the horizon widens and the wind carries the promise of a cleaner future, the ELWIND offshore project is preparing to define the next chapter of renewable energy for Estonia and Latvia. And at the heart of its early development, two companies have joined forces with a shared belief: when expertise aligns at the right moment, even the most complex challenges begin to shift. 

The collaboration between EOLOS Floating LiDAR Solutions and Youwind began in 2024 with a simple yet high-stakes question: Where should the floating LiDAR buoys be placed to capture the most representative wind conditions for ELWIND? Both teams understood that this decision would influence years of planning, from wind-resource modelling to layout design, cost projections, and ultimately the confidence of future developers. 

EOLOS brought decades of offshore measurement experience, shaped through deployments in demanding seas around the world. Youwind contributed as digital platform designed specifically to transform early-stage offshore wind questions into clear, actionable insights. What emerged from their partnership was more than a technical workflow, it was a shared approach to understanding the unseen. 

Welcome to the March edition of the Youwind newsletter

Each month, we’ll bring you the latest key developments in wind project design, product updates from our platform, company news, and a look at what our team has been working on. You’ll also find upcoming webinars, events, and insights shaping the future of wind development.

The first SaaS platform integrating BESS and H₂ into wind farm design from early-stage project development is a reality 

The energy transition is accelerating, and with it the complexity of renewable power plants. Wind farms are, especially for onshore, no longer developed as standalone generation assets — they are increasingly conceived as hybrid power plants, combining generation with storage to manage variability, and maximize return of investment. 

At Youwind, we have captured this need some time ago and we see this shift not as a future trend, but as a present reality. As projects become more complex, the need to integrate storage from the earliest stages of design in a user-friendly way has become essential. This understanding has driven the latest expansion of the Youwind platform. 

We are proud to announce that Youwind now enables the modelling of hybrid wind power plants, integrating wind generation with storage technologies — starting with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and with hydrogen (H₂) modelling to follow later this year — all within a single, collaborative web-based platform. 

As Anna Rivera, CEO and co-founder of Youwind, explains: 

“We are ready now to support the screening and design of wind farms, including storage, and to bring our customers a trusted revenue optimizer for their future and existing assets. BESS is a key piece to include from early project phases, and we are proud to be the first web-based solution to offer this expanded suite of capabilities.” 

Onshore wind project development and design  has always been an evolving discipline, moving slowly fromintuitionto  engineering: a blend of meteorology, geography, and experience. Every decision is an exercise in managing uncertainty — from predicting wind patterns and analyzing topography to assessing investment risks. Each site brings its own set of challenges, and each design iteration requires time, patience, and calculation.  

Today, technology has rewritten this process. At Youwind, we have seen how digitalization is transforming wind project development, turning what was once an art into a precise, data-driven science. Our focus in the present article is on one of the most complex parts of the process: optimising wind farm layouts. With Youwind’s software, uncertainty becomes knowledge, and slow manual iterations give way to speed, clarity, and confidence. A new paradigm of speed has been written as well, moving from running one single simulation which takes enough time to have to unplug and change task (or simply visiting once more the coffee machine), to unlimited parallel simulation that are ready in a matter of few seconds or minutes.  

The World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO) Global Summit got off to a strong start, setting a positive, yet realistic, tone for the offshore wind sector. Across Day 1 discussions, the overall mood was clear: the ambition is there, and the direction is well defined, but the industry is also fully aware of the challenges ahead. Supply chain constraints, regulatory frameworks, and grid infrastructure remain key topics we must collectively address to ensure delivery at scale.

Early-stage offshore wind project development often prioritizes wind resource and layout optimization, while foundation feasibility is deferred to later design stages. Whether positioned far offshore or on land, foundations ensure turbines remain stable, safe, and accessible throughout decades of operation. As projects grow in size, the ability to correctly assess and model these foundations early in development is key to better estimate CAPEX and LCOE.

At Youwind, we are proud to support leading developers across the globe with our grounded digital solution designed for wind energy. One of these developers is ACCIONA Energía, a global leader in renewable energy operations in more than 40 countries. Our collaboration with their team began in 2021, first through specialized support actions and then evolving into a long-term subscription partnership built on trust and performance.  

Wind farms design is becoming increasingly data-driven, but one challenge remains stubbornly constant: reality. Every potential project area , whether stretching across rural landscapes or spanning offshore waters, comes with a maze of constraints. Environmental protections, buildings, roads, grid infrastructure, terrain limitations, and regulatory buffers all shape what is truly buildable.

Yet in early-stage planning, these constraints are often scattered across datasets, manually drawn, or simply overlooked until late in the process. The result? Layouts that look good on paper but fall apart when confronted with real-world boundaries. Developers waste valuable time redrawing layouts, reconciling datasets, and iterating scenarios that were never feasible in the first place.

Youwind’s exclusion zone functionality bridges this gap. By transforming constraints into clearly defined, actionable no-go areas, it helps teams design realistic layouts for wind farms from day one, unlocking smoother workflows and more reliable outcomes.

Before any design work begins, every wind park requires a thorough understanding of its environmental and operational constraints. Fast, reliable site suitability assessments help developers anticipate risks, validate turbine choices, and ensure that early decisions are backed by accurate data rather than assumptions. With the right methodology, teams can move from uncertainty to clarity long before the first turbine position is defined.

Over the course of a trial period, Megajoule evaluated the Youwind platform across core early-stage development functionalities (layout creation, GIS constraint analysis, and wind resource assessment) benchmarking it against their established methodology for onshore and with an eye toward offshore wind.