"Knowledge center" is an awkward term in this context in English.

I see nothing wrong with your own suggestion. In what way does the number of Google hits determine whether or not this is a correct translation? A centre of knowledge would be some kind of academic arrangement, whether or not attached to a university, which seeks to expand scientific knowledge and sometimes to find practical applications for that knowledge. There is nothing stopping a private company from setting up a centre of knowledge with a view to eventually commercialising the products of the work done there.

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Note added at 1 day1 hr (2008-12-20 20:44:41 GMT)
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It certainly does include libraries etc. or places which store literature on a specific subject, e.g. http://www.knowledge.offordcentre.com/
and I would think that that kind of centre would have very little to do with energy generation from water. However, the term "centre for knowledge" (often with other words tacked on the end) seems to be more like what I have in mind, e.g. Centre for knowledge transfer
http://www.ktplondon.co.uk/ or the famous Newcastle K.I.T.E.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/kite/
You may find also page 13 of the pdf on
appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07DC09.pdf
of interest to you as it seems to be in your field of energy generation and uses the term knowledge centres extensively and on one occasion knowledge institutes.

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Note added at 1 day1 hr (2008-12-20 20:47:48 GMT)
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Sorry: complete link for the last reference should be
http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07DC09.pdf

In the Netherlands, "kennisinstelling" apparently has a strict definition, see the Ministry of economics agency website http://www.senternovem.nl/innovatievouchers/kennisinstelling... The translation used on this website is "knowledge institute", e.g. http://www.senternovem.nl/english/products_services/encourag... The term is used by the Ministry of education, culture and science as well (http://www.minocw.nl/english/organisation/808/The-Knowledge-...

There seems to be a problem with wording consistency; both institute and institution are used. There may be a distinction between organizations where the actual research takes place (universities, libraries, company R&D; institutes I would say), and administration oriented organizations such as advisory councils, government agencies, planning offices etc. (institutions?), but practice on Dutch websites doesn't seem to reflect this. You're in a better position to choose the correct term anyway.

The Dutch word for knowledge center is "kenniscentrum". Then again, who says your source text is correct and precise in its wording?

The problem here is that ‘kennisinstellingen’ is a broader and more inclusive term than any used in English, and its usage is particular to Dutch. The combination you’re referring to, ‘bedrijven, overheid, kennisinstellingen’, is also known as the ‘triple helix’, and in English it’s most commonly referred to as ‘university, industry, government’ (though not always in that order). ‘University’ may also be ‘academia’, and industry may be ‘business’.
The term ‘kennisinstellingen’ bundles together universities and research institutes. In the Netherlands it’s widely translated as ‘knowledge institutes’, but both the term and concept seems to be rare elsewhere, and most usages are traceable back to the Netherlands.
Often if you read about ‘samenwerking met kennisinstellingen’, for example, with a little probing you’ll discover that it’s simply referring to universities. At other times you might need to specify ‘universities and research institutes’. In short, it’s a headache!


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Note added at 3825 days (2019-06-11 13:02:09 GMT) Post-grading
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I should also mention that the collective term 'kennisinstelling' is also used in order to cover both Dutch types of higher education: universiteit and hogeschool. In English, however, these are both referred to as universities; a hogeschool is a 'university of applied science'.
A recent translation I worked on referred to: 'de kennis -en onderzoeksinstellingen AMS institute, HvA, UvA en VU, TNO en SQI'. Here the thinking seems to be that the two universities and the hogeschool (UvA, VU and HvA) are referred to as 'kennisinstellingen', while the research institutes are referred to as 'onderzoeksinstellingen'.
Again, the appropriate translation for 'kennisinstelling' is simply 'university'.